High-Efficiency Multilevel Volume Diffraction Gratings inside Silicon

Silicon (Si)-based integrated photonics is considered to play a pivotal role in multiple emerging technologies, including telecommunications, quantum computing, and lab-chip systems. Diverse functionalities are either implemented on the wafer surface ("on-chip") or recently within the wafer ("in-chip") using laser lithography. However, the emerging depth degree of freedom has been exploited only for single-level devices in Si. Thus, monolithic and multilevel discrete functionality is missing within the bulk. Here, we report the creation of multilevel, high-efficiency diffraction gratings in Si using three-dimensional (3D) nonlinear laser lithography. To boost device performance within a given volume, we introduce the concept of effective field enhancement at half the Talbot distance, which exploits self-imaging onto discrete levels over an optical lattice. The novel approach enables multilevel gratings in Si with a record efficiency of 53%, measured at 1550 nm. Furthermore, we predict a diffraction efficiency approaching 100%, simply by increasing the number of levels. Such volumetric Si-photonic devices represent a significant advance toward 3D-integrated monolithic photonic chips.