Boosting the SiN nonlinear photonic platform with transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

In the past few years, we have witnessed increased interest in the use of 2D materials to produce hybrid photonic nonlinear waveguides. Although graphene has attracted most of the attention, other families of 2D materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides have also shown promising nonlinear performance. In this work, we propose a strategy for designing silicon nitride waveguiding structures with embedded MoS₂ for nonlinear applications. The transverse geometry of the hybrid waveguide is optimized for high third-order nonlinear effects using optogeometrical engineering and multiple layers of MoS₂. Stacking multiple monolayers results in an improvement of two orders of magnitude compared to standard silicon nitride waveguides. The hybrid waveguide performance is then investigated in terms of four-wave mixing enhancement in micro-ring resonator configurations. A signal/idler conversion efficiency of −6.3 dB is reached for a wavelength of around 1.55 µm with a 5 mW pumping level.