Post-fabrication tuning of photonic integrated circuits via silicon ion implantation

Integrated photonic circuits represent a significant advancement in optical technology, providing notable benefits in speed, efficiency, and miniaturization. By consolidating various optical components onto a single chip, these circuits enable precise manipulation and control of light. As a result, they are playing a pivotal role in technologies such as high-speed data interconnects, sensors, artificial intelligence accelerators, and quantum computing. However, one of the key challenges that hinders the widespread adoption of integrated optics is fabrication imperfections. This work¹ highlights a scalable and non-volatile technique for post-fabrication tuning of photonic computational memories by automated silicon ion implantation to precisely align high-quality resonant devices to targeted wavelengths. Spectral shifts ranging from less than 10 pm to several nanometers are obtained showing long-term stability while adding negligible loss.