A monolithic optical phase-shift detector on silicon

Philippe Arguel (1) , Jérôme Valentin (1) , S. Fourment (1) , Françoise Lozes-Dupuy (1) , Gérard Sarrabayrouse (1) , Sophie Bonnefont (1) , Y. Jourlin (2) , S. Reynaud (2) , N. Destouches (2) , A. Tishchenko (2) , J. Jay (2)

1 LAAS - Laboratoire d'analyse et d'architecture des systèmes
2 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien [Saint Etienne]

A novel monolithically integrated device used as an optical phase-shift detector is presented. It consists of a diffraction grating etched at the surface of a p-n photodiode fabricated by a process compatible with a standard silicon CMOS technology. When two coherent light beams are collimated toward the surface of the device, the detected optical power generates a current depending on the relative phase between the two incident beams. The operating principle of this detector and the results obtained by finite-difference time-domain modeling are presented. The fabrication process of the first devices is described and the experimental validation of the concept is demonstrated

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Philippe Arguel, Jérôme Valentin, S. Fourment, Françoise Lozes-Dupuy, Gérard Sarrabayrouse, et al.. A monolithic optical phase-shift detector on silicon. IEEE Sensors Journal, 2005, 5, pp.1305-1309. ⟨10.1109/JSEN.2005.858945⟩. ⟨ujm-00122906⟩