Monolithically integrated SiON photonic circuit and silicon single-photon detectors for NIR-range operation

The integration of quantum functionalities in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) is attracting intense research efforts nowadays. Many solutions have been proposed for generation, processing and detection of single photons in such quantum PICs. A significant breakthrough would be the monolithic integration of all the three functionalities in a compact, CMOS compatible silicon chip. In this paper we present a solution to integrate monolithically photonic architectures with photon detectors on the same chip. In our device, the light (850 nm photons) propagates within a SiON waveguide, integrated on top of a silicon chip where we realized the single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs). The light is coupled from the waveguide to the detector with a novel and efficient top-down evanescent-transfer approach. The proposed solution for a monolithic integration is fully CMOS compatible. In this contribution, we characterized the performance of the photonic integrated chip, containing several waveguides coupled to SPADs. We detail the functional performance of the fabricated SPADs, as well as the system performance when the injected photons are manipulated and detected within the same chip.