Tellurium-oxide coated silicon-nitride hybrid waveguide for near-to-mid-IR supercontinuum generation: design and analysis

We report the design and numerical analysis of a tellurium-oxide coated silicon-nitride waveguide on a sapphire substrate for the generation of near-infrared to mid-infrared supercontinuum light. The hybrid waveguide structure is applicable for future on-chip photonic integrated circuits. We predict a supercontinuum spectrum that extends from 0.88 to 5.22 µm or 0.95 to 5.50 µm using a pump peak power of 10 kW at 1.55 µm (50 fs pulse-width) and 2 µm (200 fs pulse-width), respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first analysis of the generation of supercontinuum light from hybrid tellurium-oxide coated silicon-nitride waveguide pumped in the normal dispersion region. Waveguides such as this could significantly expand the functionality of the future photonic integrated circuits.