Silicon nitride is one of the most promising and mature integrated photonics platforms, providing a gateway to the development of cutting-edge devices based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) with enhanced performance capabilities. For a wide range of applications, integrated heaters remain the preferred method for controlling PICs through the thermo-optic effect. Here, we demonstrate in detail the fabrication process and the characterization of heaters based on a ${\mathrm{Sc}\mathrm{N}}_x$/${\mathrm{Nb}/\mathrm{Sc}\mathrm{N}}_x$ stack. The proposed approach addresses both of the main issues that cause heater failures: electromigration and oxidation (oxygen diffusion). The findings of the experimental investigation suggest that the proposed ${\mathrm{Sc}\mathrm{N}}_x$/${\mathrm{Nb}/\mathrm{Sc}\mathrm{N}}_x$ heaters exhibit a critical current density $j_c\sim 100{\mathrm{GA}/\mathrm{m}}^2$ and are capable of heating silicon nitride waveguides by more than $200{}^{\circ }\mathrm{C}$, providing a specific optical path change per heater length $\mathrm{\Delta }{L}_{\mathrm{optical}}/L_{\mathrm{heater}}\sim 5\text{μ}\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{mm}$ for silicon nitride waveguides in the C band. Thanks to the elevated reliability level and remarkably high efficiency, the proposed ${\mathrm{Sc}\mathrm{N}}_x$/${\mathrm{Nb}/\mathrm{Sc}\mathrm{N}}_x$ heaters potentially enable a significant reduction in the PIC footprint, without compromising performance and robustness. Additionally, we carried out a rough experimental assessment of the magnitude of thermal crosstalk.

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• Heat transfer
• Integrated optics
• Nanophotonics
• Photonic crystal waveguide
• Devices
• Nitrides
• Semiconductor compounds