Suspended low-loss germanium waveguides for the longwave-infrared

Germanium has become a material of high interest for mid-infrared (MIR) integrated photonics due to its complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility and its wide transparency window covering the 2-15 μm spectral region exceeding the 4 μm and 8 μm limit of the Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) platform and Si material respectively. Here, we present suspended germanium waveguides operating at wavelengths of 3.8 μm and 7.67 μm with propagation losses of 2.9 ± 0.2 dB/cm and 2.6 ± 0.3 dB/cm respectively.