Craig Ives wins award the ISSCC Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper for the paper entitled “Subtractive Photonic Waveguide-Coupled Photodetectors in 180nm Bulk CMOS”. The Award was presented at ISSCC 2024 on February 19. The Lewis Winner Award is based on ratings by Conference attendees in the previous year and given to the paper with the highest rating.

This paper presents subtractive photonics as a method for implementing photonic waveguides into any bulk CMOS or electronics process. Metal and glass are patterned in the backend layers by the foundry to reveal suspended dielectric waveguides when the metal is etched away. This method requires a simple wet etch and provides waveguiding of light up to the visible regime using the broad transparency windows of silicon oxides. Mechanical, chemical, and photonic considerations are discussed, and photonic design is extensively detailed in the context of a 180-nm CMOS process. Example waveguides are constructed and measured, with losses as low as 4.1 dB/cm for a multimode waveguide at 1550 nm. In addition, waveguides are measured in the visible range, waveguide-photodiode couplers are detailed, and electronic–photonic systems are demonstrated to be unaffected by the etching.

The work presented part of Craig’s Ph.D. thesis work and is coauthored by Ali Hajimiri.