Photonics uses light rather than electrons to perform a wide variety of applications such as sensing, communication, and data processing Silicon photonics, in particular, is gaining significant attention It allows massive fabrication of optical devices at low cost by utilizing standard fabrication techniques and CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) compatible materials In this talk, I will focus on using silicon nitride as our platform It allows us to achieve ultra low-loss and observe nonlinear processes with record-low power I will start with an overview of the process applicable to fabrication of most photonic devices A more detailed explanation of critical process steps including deposition, lithography and etching are presented Then I will talk about applications utilizing ultra low-loss silicon nitride resonators Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of possible research avenues one could take to build upon work presented here

Xingchen Ji is a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in the City of New York. He received his Ph.D degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University in 2018, advised by Professor Michal Lipson. During his Ph.D, his research has focused on ultra low-loss microresonator fabrication and microresonator frequency combs. He has reported the lowest threshold in silicon nitride resonators for frequency comb generation. At Columbia University, Xingchen has continued his research in integrated photonics and developing microresonator frequency combs for real-world applications.