Robust single-etch surface grating couplers for silicon nitride waveguide platform

Silicon nitride (SiN) has emerged as an important waveguide platform to implement integrated photonic circuits for a wide range of applications, including telecommunications, nonlinear optics, and quantum information. The SiN platform is compatible with a CMOS fabrication and provides attractive properties such as low propagation loss and increased tolerance to fabrication errors. However, a comparatively low index contrast is a challenge for …