Waveguide Integrated SNSPDs on Foundry Silicon PICs

To address the NASA need for integrated photonic single photon detectors, memQ proposes to create superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs) through back-end-of-line fabrication on the 300mm silicon photonics platform at AIM photonics. Waveguide integrated SNSPDs offer un-matched performance in terms of efficiency and timing precision, and would benefit PIC based technologies such as LiDAR, optical communications, quantum systems, and sensing. In phase I, the feasibility of the approach will be investigated through fabrication and characterization of SNSPDs onto foundry PICs. In phase II, SNSPDs would be fabricated on 300mm wafer-scale and optimized for yield. At the end of phase II, this technology is expected to be ready (TRL-6) for development as a component on AIM’s platform - which will be the focus of a Phase III type effort.

Single-photon detectors compatible with photonic integrated circuits are critical to several technologies of interest to NASA, such as space-to-ground optical communication, quantum communication, and LIDAR. Currently there does not exist a silicon photonic foundry which offers a path to fabricating waveguide integrated SNSPDs at scale. Overcoming this challenge would enable NASA to deploy more advanced, reliable, and miniaturized photonic systems at scale for both interplanetary communication and remote sensing applications, thus enhancing mission capabilities and the exploration of the cosmos. Integrated SNSPDs are a crucial milestone on the roadmap for many quantum technology companies developing hardware based on integrated photonics. In particular, quantum communication, trapped ion quantum computing, and linear optical quantum computing all require an efficient way to detect single photons and are also increasingly using photonic integrated circuit based platforms. Additionally, for usable photonic quantum information processing to scale, it is necessary to deploy hundreds or thousands of single photon detectors to enable many parallel operations. The only feasible way to do this is through integration with standard foundry processes. In addition to quantum applications, other PIC based technologies such as LiDAR and spectroscopy stand to benefit from the development of waveguide integrated SNSPDs.

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