Thesis presented November 08, 2006

Abstract:
The work reported in this manuscript consisted in exploring the association possibilities between room temperature silicon related emitters and whispering gallery modes microcavities integrated on silicon.
The first part of the work deals with the development of erbium based emitting material. Various matrix are used in order to obtain efficient emission at room temperature in the 1.54 µm wavelength range: silica, silicon on insulator (SOI) and silicon-rich oxide (SRO: silicon nanoclusters in silica). The emitters chosen for the study, SOI and erbium doped SRO, are then integrated to microdisk microcavities using processes similar to those used in the microelectronic industry. Silica based microdisk are subsequently annealed using CO₂ laser, which makes it possible to reduce the residual roughness by selective melting of the disk edge resulting in the formation of toroidal microcavity.
The obtained structures are then studied using a specific photoluminescence measurement bench, developed by our research team to take the specificities of whispering gallery modes into account. Coupling of silicon and erbium doped SRO emission to high-quality factor whispering gallery modes (Q up to 90000) is observed at room temperature. These results, together with the demonstration of the coupling between SOI microdisk and waveguides modes, are really promising for both fundamental studies (CQED effects on rare earth) and applications (integrated light source for microphotonics)

Keywords:
silicon, whispering gallery modes, photonics

On-line thesis.