Synthesis of BaTiO3 Thin Films for Photonics

BaTiO3 thin films present exciting opportunities for use in electro-optic device fabrication. BaTiO3 has a Pockels coefficient that is about 30x higher than the currently used thin film LiNbO3 , a high refractive index (~2.4) and a wide bandgap (>3) making it ideal for use in integrated photonics. We can integrate BaTiO3 onto silicon substrates to make an electro-optic device. We use reactive-oxide molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to synthesize high quality BaTiO3 thin films. We explore different thin film transfer methods to enable the pristine transfer of BaTiO3 onto silicon substrates for device fabrication. Our method could be a potentially straightforward, scalable, and efficient method for the nanofabrication of BaTiO3 thin films for integration into optical devices.