Abstract

In this work, we present a new technology platform to embed colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) into silicon nitride, a standard CMOS material recently receiving much attention for applications in photonics due to broadband transparency. Embedding the NCs offers improved long-term stability and potential coupling of the NC emission with photonic structures defined in the silicon nitride, such as optical resonators. As a demonstrator, we present active hybrid NC/silicon nitride free standing microdisks, where the spontaneous emission of the NCs (emitting in the visible region) couples efficiently to the resonant whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of the microdisk. Using a unique spatially and spectrally resolved micro-PL setup, we are able to map the emission from the microdisk. We identified three different families of modes and showed good agreement with simulations. Current research focuses on the coupling of single nanocrystals to the WGMs as to allow on-chip quantum optics obtained through cheap wet processing techniques such as spin-coating or drop-casting.