High-performance optical phased array for LiDARs demonstrated by monolithic integration of polymer and SiN waveguides.

Optical phased array (OPA) beam scanners for light detection and ranging (LiDAR) are proposed by integrating polymer waveguides with superior thermo-optic effect and silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides exhibiting strong modal confinement along with high optical power capacity. A low connection loss of only 0.15 dB between the polymer and SiN waveguides was achieved in this work, enabling a low-loss OPA device. The polymer-SiN monolithic OPA demonstrates not only high optical throughput but also efficient beamforming and stable beam scanning. This novel integrative approach highlights the potential of leveraging heterogeneous photonic materials to develop advanced photonic integrated circuits with superior performance.