SiON Integrated Optics Elliptic Couplers for Fizeau-Based Optical Coherence Tomography

Integrated optics potentially can offer significant cost reductions and new applications to Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). We design, fabricate, and characterize Silicon oxynitride (SiON) elliptic couplers, which can be used to focus light from a chip into the off-chip environment. Fizeau-based OCT measurements are performed with elliptic couplers and a moveable mirror. The optical fields at the output of the elliptic coupler are simulated and measured. Good agreement is observed between the measured OCT signal as a function of depth and calculations based on the optical field at the end of the elliptic coupler.