Atomic-Layer Engineered Erbium-Doped Waveguide Amplifier with a 14.4 dB Net Gain

Erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers have recently sparked significant interest due to their importance in photonic integrated circuits and on-chip light sources. Erbium-doped thin films deposited through the atomic layer deposition technique hold great potential for achieving excellent optical performance and integration with various material platforms. Here, we demonstrate hybrid erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers using atomic layer deposition and conduct a comprehensive characterization of their gains and output powers. A 9.31 cm amplifier reaches net gains of 14.4 ± 1.2 dB at 1531.6 nm and 13.7 ± 1.8 dB at 1550 nm. These correspond to directly measured off-chip gains of 10.5 ± 0.3 dB and 9.5 ± 0.8 dB at 1531.6 and 1550 nm, respectively. A maximum on-chip output power of 8.0 ± 1.6 dBm is achieved at 1550 nm. The amplifier exhibits a broadband net gain exceeding 9 dB across the C-band, with a low noise figure of 4.5 dB for an input power of <−18.6 dBm. This work paves the way for the future development of high-performance on-chip amplifiers and light sources.