Investigation on optical integration between LED Mid-IR light sources and Si-based waveguides for sensing applications

Abstract

Research on mid-IR silicon-based waveguides has recently received strong interest. Particularly, this paper focuses on one of the critical issues in micron-scale photonic integrated circuits, which is to efficiently couple a mid-IR LED (light emitting diode) light source to an external micron-scale waveguide. The optical coupling scheme is crucial for the exploitation of LED light sources in waveguide-based spectroscopic sensing applications. This paper reports optical coupling scheme between an LED mid-IR light source and a silicon rich silicon nitride (SiN) waveguide that could enable the use of LED-based light sources. Finally, the detection limit of the investigated device for carbon dioxide gas detection is calculated.