title: Flexible single-crystal silicon nanomembrane photonic crystal cavity.
abstract: Flexible inorganic electronic devices promise numerous applications, especially in fields that could not be covered satisfactorily by conventional rigid devices. Benefits on a similar scale are also foreseeable for silicon photonic components. However, the difficulty in transferring intricate silicon photonic devices has deterred widespread development. In this paper, we demonstrate a flexible single-crystal silicon nanomembrane photonic crystal microcavity through a bonding and substrate removal approach. The transferred cavity shows a quality factor of 2.2×10(4) and could be bent to a curvature of 5 mm radius without deteriorating the performance compared to its counterparts on rigid substrates. A thorough characterization of the device reveals that the resonant wavelength is a linear function of the bending-induced strain. The device also shows a curvature-independent sensitivity to the ambient index variation.
authors.affiliation: Microelectronics Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin , 10100 Burnet Road, Bldg. 160, Austin, Texas 78758, United States.
authors.forename: Xiaochuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Harish
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Subbaraman
authors.forename: Swapnajit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chakravarty
authors.forename: Amir
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hosseini
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Covey
authors.forename: Yalin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kwong
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Wei-Cheng
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.forename: Nanshu
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Ray T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D049329:Nanostructures; D055096:Optical Devices; D017785:Photons; D012825:Silicon / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D012825:Silicon
keywords: flexible inorganic devices; photonic crystal; photonic crystal cavity; silicon nanomembrane; wafer bonding