On-chip spectrometer using stratified waveguides filters

Abstract: We present an ultra-compact single-shot spectrometer on silicon platform with broad operation bandwidth and high resolution. It consists of 32 stratified waveguide filters (SWFs) with diverse transmission spectra for sampling the unknown spectrum of the input signal and a specially designed ultra-compact structure for splitting the incident signal into 32 filters with low imbalance. Each SWF has a footprint less than 1um x 30um, while the 1x32 splitter and 32 filters in total occupy an area of about 35um x 260um, which to the best of our knowledge, is the smallest footprint spectrometer realized on silicon photonic platform. Experimental characteristics of the fabricated spectrometer demonstrate a broad operating bandwidth of 180nm centered at 1550nm and narrowband peaks with 0.45nm Full-Width-Half-Maximum (FWHM) can be clearly resolved. This concept can also be implemented using other material platforms for operation in optical spectral bands of interest for various applications.