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Abstract The field of integrated photonics has advanced rapidly due to wafer-scale fabrication, with integrated-photonics platforms and fabrication processes being demonstrated at both infrared and visible wavelengths. However, these demonstrations have primarily focused on fabrication processes on silicon substrates that result in rigid photonic wafers and chips, which limit the potential application spaces. There are many application areas that would benefit from mechanically-flexible integrated-photonics wafers, such as wearable healthcare monitors and pliable displays. Although there have been demonstrations of mechanically-flexible photonics fabrication, they have been limited to fabrication processes on the individual device or chip scale, which limits scalability. In this paper, we propose, develop, and experimentally characterize the first 300-mm wafer-scale platform and fabrication process that results in mechanically-flexible photonic wafers and chips. First, we develop and describe the 300-mm wafer-scale CMOS-compatible flexible platform and fabrication process. Next, we experimentally demonstrate key optical functionality at visible wavelengths, including chip coupling, waveguide routing, and passive devices. Then, we perform a bend-durability study to characterize the mechanical flexibility of the photonic chips, demonstrating bending a single chip 2000 times down to a bend diameter of 0.5 inch with no degradation in the optical performance. Finally, we experimentally characterize polarization-rotation effects induced by bending the flexible photonic chips. This work will enable the field of integrated photonics to advance into new application areas that require flexible photonic chips. 

In this work, we design and experimentally demonstrate the first, to the best of our knowledge, integrated polarization splitters and rotators at blue wavelengths. We develop compact and efficient designs for both a polarization splitter and rotator at a 422-nm wavelength, an important laser-cooling transition for⁸⁸Sr⁺ions. These devices are fabricated in a 200-mm wafer-scale process and experimentally demonstrated, resulting in a measured polarization-splitter transverse-electric thru-port coupling of 98.0% and transverse-magnetic tap-port coupling of 77.6% for a compact 16-µm-long device and a polarization-rotator conversion efficiency of 92.2% for a separate compact 111-µm-long device. This work paves the way for more sophisticated integrated control of trapped-ion and neutral-atom quantum systems. 

Integrated polarization rotators and splitters are designed for the first time at visible wavelengths. Specifically, an adiabatic polarization rotator, an off-axis polarization rotator, and a mode-coupling polarization splitter are designed in a silicon-nitride platform. 

We design and experimentally demonstrate the first pair of integrated TE- and TM- emitting gratings at a wavelength of 422nm, targeting the 5²s_1/2-5²p_1/2transition of⁸⁸Sr⁺ions, to enable operations requiring diverse polarizations for integrated-photonics-based trapped-ion quantum systems. 

We develop a framework for two advanced trapped-ion cooling schemes, polarization-gradient and electromagnetically-induced-transparency cooling, for⁸⁸Sr⁺ions using a visible-wavelength integrated-photonics platform and present the design of the key integrated devices.