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😕 What is a Chicago Citation Generator?

A Chicago Citation Generator is a software tool that automatically generates citations and bibliographies in the Chicago citation style.

Citations can be created by entering an identifying piece of information about a source, such as a website URL, book ISBN, or journal article DOI to the generator. The generator will then create a fully formatted citation in the Chicago style containing all the required information for the source.

Chicago style citations are used to give credit to the authors of supporting work that has been used to write an academic paper or article.

👩‍🎓 Who uses an Chicago Citation Generator?

The Chicago style is primarily used by college and university students studying business, history, social sciences, the fine arts, amongst others.

🙌 Why should I use a Chicago Citation Generator?

Citing sources is often an afterthought in paper writing because formatting citations correctly is time-consuming and confusing, and staying on top of source management manually can be hard. A citation generator makes this easier by:

• Decreasing the time you would spend formatting citations correctly
• Managing the recording and organization of every citation for you

In short, there is no reason not to use a citation generator in academic writing.

⚙️ How do I use MyBib's Chicago Citation Generator?

To get started, scroll up back up to the tool at the top of the page and follow these steps:

• Select the type of source you want to cite
• If it's a website, enter the URL in the search bar. If it's a book, enter the ISBN or title. If it's a journal article, enter the DOI or title. For all other sources, enter the details of the source into the form
• Select the search result that most closely represents the source you referred to in your paper
• Shazam! The generator will automatically format the citation in the Chicago style. Copy it into your paper, or save it to your bibliography to download later
• Repeat for every other citation you need to create for your paper

MyBib supports the following for Chicago style:

Daniel is a qualified librarian, former teacher, and citation expert. He has been contributing to MyBib since 2018.

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BibGuru Chicago Citation Generator

Cite websites, books, articles, ...

What is a Chicago citation generator and how can it help you?

Getting citations and reference lists correctly done can be very confusing and time-consuming.

The good news is that our Chicago citation generator can do it automatically for you and it is FREE to use! 🎉

Not convinced yet? Here are 5 reasons why you are going to love the BibGuru Chicago citation maker :

😌 No flood of distracting ads

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🎓 Chicago, APA, MLA, Harvard and thousands of other citation styles

🥇 Most accurate citation data

With BibGuru we have made a citation tool that truly helps students to focus on the content of their work instead of worrying about how to get their reference list correctly done.

Those days of wasting time entering data manually or losing grades on incorrect bibliographies are finally gone!

If you need to know more about Chicago citations check out our How do I cite in Chicago style? section or our detailed Chicago citation guides .

Why, when, and what do I have to cite?

Why The broad scientific knowledge we have today is the accomplishment of many researchers over time. To put your own contribution in context , it is important to cite the work of the researchers who influenced you. Cited sources can provide key background information, support or dispute your thesis, or offer important definitions and data. Citing also shows that you have personally read the work.

When In addition to crediting the ideas of others that you used to build your own argument, you need to provide documentation for all facts and figures that are not common knowledge. Common knowledge is knowledge that is known by everyone, or nearly everyone, and can basically concern any subject. An example for common knowledge would be "There are seven days in a week".

What The number of sources you cite in your work depends on the intent of the paper. In most cases, you will need to cite one or two of the most representative sources for each key point. However, if you are working on a review article, the aim is to present to the readers everything that has been written on a topic, so you will need to include a more exhaustive list of citations.

What is the Chicago citation style?

The Chicago format was developed by the University of Chicago Press in 1906. The first edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, a compilation of the typographical rules in force at the University of Chicago Press, had 203 pages and evolved into a comprehensive reference style guide of 1,146 pages in its seventeenth edition. It was one of the first editorial style guides published in the US and has largely impacted research methodology standardization, particularly citation style.

The style guide specifically focuses on American English and also deals with aspects of editorial practice, including grammar and usage, as well as document preparation and formatting. For citations, the Chicago style offers authors the choice between two formats:

• The notes and bibliography system: Preferred by many working in the humanities (literature, history, the arts,..). Sources are cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes in the text and listed in a separate bibliography.
• The author-date system: Often used in the sciences and social sciences. Sources are briefly cited in the text (usually in parentheses, author's last name and year of publication), and matched up with an entry in a reference list with full bibliographic information.

Aside from the use of numbered footnotes vs. parenthetical citations in-text, the two systems share a similar style. If you are not sure which system to use in your paper, ask your instructor. Using the correct system can have a great impact on your grade, so be sure clarify that before starting with your paper.

How to cite in the notes and bibliography system?

Instead of naming the authors in the text, which can be distracting to the reader, numbers are used to denote citations in the notes and bibliography system. These numbers in the text are linked to a full reference in footnotes or endnotes and in your bibliography. Cited publications are numbered in the order in which they are first referred to in the text. Please make sure to follow the rules below when citing in this system:

• Check whether footnotes or endnotes are required for your work. Footnotes are found at the bottom of a page and endnotes are located at the end of a document, or sometimes at the end of a chapter or section.
• All notes end with a full stop (in both footnotes/endnotes and bibliography).
• In the footnotes, author names should be first name followed by last name, for example 'Gregg Levoy'. In the bibliography, author names should be last name followed by first name, for example 'Levoy, Gregg'.
• If there are up to three authors of a source, give their names in your references in the order they are shown in the source. For four or more authors, give the name of the first author, followed by 'et al.' in the footnotes, but list all the authors in the bibliography. The first author's name is given in the bibliography as last name, first name, but other authors are written as first name last name.
• Italicize the title of books, journals and websites. Titles of articles, chapters, unpublished sources and web pages within a website are placed within double quotation marks.
• In your bibliography, also include sources you have read but not cited, in addition to your footnotes/endnotes.
• The first time you cite a source give full details in the footnotes/endnotes. Subsequent entries of the same source can be abbreviated to the author's last name and the first few words of the title, plus a page number number.
• When citing internet addresses (URLs) and Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), the URL is given in full; the accessed date is placed before the URL; and DOIs should be used if they are available as they are a permanent locator, instead of URLs. If using a DOI, you do not need to give the accessed date.
• Formatting: The first line of footnotes should be indented by 1/2 inch (1.3cm) and subsequent lines are not indented. For the bibliography the first line of references is not indented, but the second and subsequent lines have a hanging indent of 1/2 inch (1.3cm).

The citation order for a book in the notes and bibliography system would be:

• Title (in italics)
• Edition (only if it is not the first edition)
• Place of publication: publisher, year of publication (all in round brackets in footnote, but not in bibliography)
• Comma then page reference in footnote

David Halliday, Robert Resnick, and Jearl Walker, Fundamentals of Physics (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013), 18.

Bibliography:

Halliday, David, Robert Resnick, and Jearl Walker. Fundamentals of Physics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013.

Here is the citation order and an example for a citation of a journal article:

• Title of article (in double quotation marks)
• Title of journal (in italics)
• Volume number, issue number
• Year of publication (in round brackets)
• Colon then page reference in footnote or page span in bibliography

Peter Leach, "James Paine's Design for the South Front of Kedleston Hall: Dating and Sources," Architectural History 40 (1997): 160.

Leach, Peter. "James Paine's Design for the South Front of Kedleston Hall: Dating and Sources." Architectural History 40 (1997): 159-70

How to cite in the author-date system?

As with APA or Harvard style, the Chicago author-date format uses in-text citations comprising the author's name and year of publication (and specific page reference if required). A reference list (rather than a bibliography) at the end of the work provides full bibliographical details for the sources used, listed in alphabetical order.

The major difference between the two systems in the form of the references is the position of the year of publication. In the notes and bibliography system the year comes towards the end of the reference, whereas in the author-date system it is on the second place in the reference, right after the author's name.

Axler, Sheldon. 2017. Linear Algebra Done Right. New York: Springer.

While all the specific rules of the Chicago citation style might sound very complicated, you don't need to worry about getting them wrong with BibGuru.

Use our Chicago citation generator above to create the fastest and most accurate Chicago citations possible.

If you want to know more about Chicago citations check out our Chicago citation guides to get detailed information on the various publication types.

Getting citations and reference lists correctly done can be very confusing and time-consuming. The BibGuru Chicago citation generator will help you focus on the content of your work instead of worrying about how to get their reference list correctly done.

You can create a reference in the BibGuru Chicago citation generator by entering the URL/title/doi or other identifier of your source into the search box, choose a category, click enter, and that's it. You have a 100% correct reference in Chicago style in seconds.

Yes, you can create in-text citations in the BibGuru Chicago citation generator. All you have to do is click on the 'Bibliography and in-text citations' button at the top of the reference list, and this will automatically create an in-text citation for every reference.

Yes, the BibGuru Chicago citation generator is free.

The Chicago style is used mainly in the humanities (literature, history, the arts,..) or in the social sciences (business). While the notes and bibliography is mainly used in the humanities, the author-date system is preferably used in the social sciences.

The text in your paper should be double-spaced. Footnotes and bibliographies are single-spaced, but need to have a double-space in between the entries.

Yes, the Chicago style has guidelines for a title page. Some of the key guidelines are:

• The title should be centered a third of the way down the page
• Other information (your name, class, etc.) follows several lines later
• All text is aligned in the center and double-spaced
• No page number is included on the title page

In the notes and bibliography system, you always include page numbers. In in-text citations you give a page number when you are paraphrasing or quoting directly from the text, or referring to information from a specific section.

While The Chicago Manual of Style does not include a prescribed system for formatting headings and subheads, it makes several recommendations. You can read some of them here .

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What is the Chicago Style Citation?

Chicago citations are used by students, writers and researchers worldwide to acknowledge the use of other people’s words and ideas in their written work, thereby lending credibility to their statements and conclusions without committing plagiarism.

There are two basic documentation systems in this style:

• Notes-Bibliography System (NB) is made up of footnotes or endnotes (or both), and a bibliography
• Author-Date System consists of parenthetical author-date citations and a corresponding reference list including full publication information

The style offers academic writers the choice between these two formats; choosing which system you are going to apply to your work will depend on your discipline and the type of sources you are citing. If you are unsure which system you should be using, make sure you consult your tutor before you begin.

The notes and bibliography system is primarily used in the humanities – including literature, history, and the arts – because it is a flexible style that accommodates unusual source types and opens up space for commentary on the sources cited. A superscript number at the end of the sentence signals to the reader that a source has been used, and summary details of the source can be found using the numbered footnote at the bottom of the page. Full details of the source information can be located in the bibliography, which is presented at the end of the essay in alphabetical order by author. Read more about creating Chicago style footnotes here.

The Chicago style citation also has an author-date variant, which is commonly used by those in the physical, natural, and social sciences. Sources are briefly cited in the text and enclosed within parentheses. Each parenthetical citation includes the author’s last name and date of publication, and is keyed to a corresponding citation in a complete list of references, where full bibliographic information is provided.

Whether you are using the notes and bibliography system or the author-date style in your work, the Cite This For Me citing tool will help to generate your citations in seconds. Simply log in to your account, or create one for free, and select the note-bib or author-date version of this style.

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Cite This For Me Chicago Citation Generator

Our mission at Cite This For Me is to educate students on the benefits of utilizing multiple sources in their written work and the importance of accurately citing all source material. This guide has been written to support students, writers and researchers by offering clear, well-considered advice on the usage of Chicago citations.

We understand that it is easy to inadvertently plagiarize your work under the mounting pressure of expectation and deadlines. That’s why we’ve created this generator to automate the citing process, allowing you to save valuable time transcribing and organizing your citations. So, rather than starting from scratch when your essay, article, or research is due, save yourself the legwork with the Cite This For Me citation generator . It’s a quick and easy way to cite any source.

There are thousands of other citation styles out there – the use of which one varies according to scholarly discipline, college requirements, your professor’s preference or the publication you are writing for. Sign up to Cite This For Me to select from over thousands of widely used global college styles, including college variations of each.

If you are looking to cite your work using MLA formatting , or your discipline requires you to use the APA citation format, you’ll find the style you need on the Cite This For Me website. As well as the Chicago citation generator above, Cite This For Me provides open generators and style guides for styles such as ASA , AMA or IEEE . Simply go to the Cite This For Me website and choose your style from our comprehensive list. Whichever style you’re using, make sure that you apply the recommended method consistently throughout your work.

Keep reading our comprehensive guide for practical advice and examples that will help you create each Chicago style citation with ease. If you need further information or examples, consult The Chicago Manual of Style 17th ed. (we’re not affiliated with the official manual which is published by the University of Chicago Press).

How do I Create and Format Chicago Style Citations?

While the Cite This For Me generator helps you be accurate, whether you are writing a college assignment or preparing a research project, you are encouraged to review your citations manually for consistency, accuracy and completeness according to this guide.

I. Notes-Bibliography System

• Formatting a footnote

Rather than a parenthetical Chicago citation, you should insert a footnote to acknowledge your source material. Whenever you cite a source, whether it is using a direct quote, paraphrasing another author’s words, or simply referring to an idea or theory, you should:

• Insert a superscript number (raised slightly above the line) at the end of the sentence containing the source – begin with number 1 and continue numerically throughout the paper
• The superscript number should follow any punctuation mark (full stops, parentheses and commas etc.). Do not put any punctuation after the number
• Each number must correspond to a matching number at the foot of the page – while note numbers in-text are set as superscript numbers, the notes themselves are full size
• A footnote generally lists the author (first name first), title, and facts of publication (enclosed in parentheses), in that order – each should be separated by commas. Titles are capitalized, titles of books and journals are italicized, titles of smaller works (e.g., chapters or articles) are presented in roman and enclosed in double quotation marks
• A footnote, or Chicago style citation, should always end with a period
• Notes should be separated from the main body of text with a typed line 1 ½ inches long
• Notes are single-spaced in Chicago style format, and the first line of each footnote is indented two spaces from the page margin. Double-space between each note
• Abbreviations include editor/edited by/ edition (ed/eds.), translator/translated by (trans.), volume (vol.), chapter (chap.), no date (n.d), part (pt.), and others (et al.) and revised/revised by/revision/review (rev.)

If you’re looking for additional help and still finding it necessary to type “in-text citations Chicago” into a search engine, read here for more information about formatting your footnotes. You can also consult sections 14.24-14.60 of the CMOS for more detailed information on notes.

• Formatting a shortened note

While the first Chicago style citation for each source should include all relevant bibliographic information, if you cite the same source again you can use a shortened form of the note.

• The short form need only include enough information to remind your reader of the full title, or to direct them to the appropriate entry in the bibliography
• Include the surname of the author, a shortened form of the title of the work cited (if more than four words), and page number(s) in the Chicago citation
• If a work has two or three authors, cite in full the first time and subsequently give the last name of each; for more than three, the surname of the first author followed by et al.
• Farmwinkle, Humor of the Midwest , 241.
• Farmwinkle, 260-263.
• Citing one source multiple times in the same paragraph? You can cite it either parenthetically in-text or in subsequent notes by means of an abbreviation – e.g. Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1996), 52 (hereafter cited in text as Dalloway )

Sections 14.29-14.36 of the CMOS contain more information on shortened notes.

Formatting an endnote

If you are drawing on multiple sources, a page cluttered with footnotes can overwhelm your reader. While readers of scholarly works generally prefer footnotes for ease of reference, endnotes are less intrusive and will not interrupt the flow of your work. You should judge for yourself whether footnotes or endnotes would best compliment your assignment, and then Cite This For Me’s Chicago style citation maker will generate them for you.

• Whilst footnotes are added at the end of the page on which the source is cited, endnotes will be compiled at the end of each chapter or at the end of the entire work (this usually depends on the length of your work)
• Notes should be numbered consecutively (beginning with number 1) throughout each chapter or article

I. Author-Date System

If you are using the author-date system to format your Chicago style citations, you must indicate each source with a brief parenthetical citation:

• Include the last name of author, the year of publication, and a page number in parentheses. A comma should be placed after the year of publication and before the page number.
• Position the parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence referring to the source, and place just inside a mark of punctuation – unless it is a block quotation , in which case it is placed outside the punctuation
• Where the author’s name appears in the text, you don’t need to repeat it in the Chicago style in-text citation
• When citing works with more than three authors, only the name of the first author is used in the in-text citation Chicago reference, followed by et al. – e.g. (Schonen et al. 2009, 145)
• Compile a list of all source material in a reference list at the end of your assignment

Chapter 15 of the CMOS is devoted to the author-date reference system.

Recent revisions to the format have allowed for a certain degree of flexibility when it comes to Chicago in-text citations. You may prefer to use a combination of footnotes and parenthetical author-date citations (especially if you have an excess of notes) – you could use author-date citations to indicate sources within the text, and numbered footnotes or endnotes to add comments.

Why not give the Cite This For Me app or web tool a try? Save yourself the bother of formatting each Chicago style citation and have the whole thing done using our automated technology. Simply search for the author or title of the book you want to cite and leave the rest to us. Your Chicago style bibliographies have never been easier to develop!

Creating My Bibliography and Reference List

Each Chicago citation in the body of your written work should be directly keyed to a bibliography or reference list entry. Compiling a full list of all the source material that has contributed to your research and writing process is the perfect opportunity to show your reader the effort you have gone to in researching your chosen topic, ensuring that you get the grade you deserve.

Have you been wondering how to organize all of your formatted Chicago style citations in a comprehensive list? Well look no further, because here’s the lowdown on how to structure your bibliography and you can always find more in sections 14.61-14.71 of the CMOS:

• Arrange sources alphabetically by author’s last name (if no author or editor is listed then by the title or keyword that readers are most likely to seek)
• Usually titled ‘Bibliography’, and placed at the end of your work but preceding the index
• A full bibliography will include all relevant sources that provided further reading, even if they were not directly cited in your work – check with your tutor whether or not this is necessary
• Each bibliographic entry should include: author name (last name first, separating last and first name with a comma), title of work (italicized, titles of articles and chapters etc. enclosed in quotation marks instead), publication information (publisher name, location, year of publication)
• All the main elements in the Chicago citation are separated by periods rather than commas
• Terms such as editor, edition, translator, volume are abbreviated, but edited by, translated by must be spelled out in the bibliography
• Do not include specific page numbers, but for easier location of chapters or journal articles, include the beginning and ending page numbers of the whole chapter or article
• Go here to find more information on accurately compiling a bibliography

II. Author-Date System

If you are adopting the author-date variant of Chicago style citations, read the above list for a guide on how to compile your reference list. There are just two differences from the notes-bibliography system:

• Instead of a bibliography your list should be titled ‘References’ or ‘Works Cited’
• The year of publication comes directly after the author’s name – this facilitates the easy lookup of reference list entries because it copies the format of the in-text citation

Are you spending too much time on completing your bibliography? The Cite This For Me Chicago citation generator is here to help take a weight off your mind. Try our Chicago citation machine and see how simple it is to create your references.

Chicago Format Examples (17th Edition)

Carefully follow these examples when compiling and formatting both your in-text citations and bibliography in order to avoid losing marks for citing incorrectly.

Each example in this section includes a numbered footnote, a shortened form of the note, and a corresponding bibliography entry.

Book with single author or editor:

• Full Chicago citation in a footnote:

5. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 99-100.

• Shortened citation in a footnote:

5. Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma , 3.

• Bibliography entry:

Pollan, Michael, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals . New York: Penguin, 2006.

Book with multiple authors:

For a book with two authors in Chicago format style, note that only the first-listed name is inverted in the bibliography entry.

• Full Chicago style citation in a footnote:

3. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945 (New York: Knopf, 2007), 52.

3. Ward and Burns, War , 52.

Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945 . New York: Knopf, 2007.

Print journal article:

89. Walter Blair, “Americanized Comic Braggarts,” Critical Inquiry 4, no. 2 (1977): 331-32.

89. Blair, “Americanized Comic Braggarts,” 335.

Blair, Walter. “Americanized Comic Braggarts.” Critical Inquiry 4, no. 2 (1977): 331-49.

Online journal article:

When citing electronic sources consulted online, the Chicago style citation manual recommends including an electronic resource identifier, where possible, to lead your reader directly to the source.

A URL is a uniform resource locator, which directs the reader straight to the online source. When using a URL, simply copy the address from your browser’s address bar when viewing the article. You must include the source’s full publication information as well.

12. Wilfried Karmaus and John F. Riebow, “Storage of Serum in Plastic and Glass Containers May Alter the Serum Concentration of Polychlorinated Biphenyls,” Environmental Health Perspectives 112 (May 2004): 645, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3435987.

12. Karmaus and Riebow, “Storage of Serum,” 645.

• Bibliography Chicago style entry:

Karmaus, Wilfried, and John F. Riebow. “Storage of Serum in Plastic and Glass Containers May Alter the Serum Concentration of Polychlorinated Biphenyls.” Environmental Health Perspectives 112 (May 2004): 643-647. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3435987.

A DOI is a digital object identifier; a unique and permanent name assigned to a piece of intellectual property, such as a journal article, in any medium in which it is published. If it is available, a DOI is preferable to an ISBN.

3. William J. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113 (June 2008): 758, doi:10.1086/ahr.113.3.752.

3. Novak, “Myth,” 770.

• Chicago style bibliography entry:

Novak, William J. “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113 (June 2008): 752-72. doi:10.1086/ahr.113.3.752.

5. Kathy Ishizuka, “Steal this Infographic: Librarians as Tech Leaders,” The Digital Shift, Library Journal, December 10, 2013, http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/12/k-12/steal-infographic/.

5. Ishizuka “Steal this Infographic.”

Ishizuka, Kathy. “Steal this Infographic: Librarians as Tech Leaders.” The Digital Shift, Library Journal. December 10, 2013. http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/12/k-12/steal-infographic/.

II. Author-Date System:

Each example in this section includes a Chicago style in-text citation and a corresponding reference list entry.

Article with single author or editor, author mentioned in text:

• An in-text citation without a direct quote does not require a page number:

Here we empirically demonstrate that workers’ and regulatory agents’ understandings of discrimination and legality emerge not only in the shadow of the law but also, as Albiston (2005) suggests…

• With a direct quote, include the page number:

In her study on FMLA, Albiston (2005, 30) found that, “virtually all of the female respondents had no difficulty initially taking leave, but when they attempted to return, they encountered resistance and perceptions that they were less reliable and committed to their work.

• Reference list entry:

Albiston, Catherine R. 2005. “Bargaining in the Shadow of Social Institutions: Competing Discourses and Social Change in the Workplace Mobilization of Civil Rights.” Law and Society Review 39 (1): 11-47.

Article with multiple authors, author not mentioned in text:

• Chicago in-text citation:

As legal observers point out, much dispute resolution transpires outside the courtroom but in the “shadow of the law” (Mnookin and Kornhauser 1979, 950-97)…

Mnookin, Robert, and Lewis Kornhauser. 1979. “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce.” Yale Law Journal 88 (5): 950-97.

*For a work with four or more authors, include all the authors in the reference list entry. However, in the in-text citation you need only cite the last name of the first-listed author, followed by et al. (e.g. Barnes et al. 2008, 118-19)

• In the text:

(Ishizuka 2013)

Ishizuka, Kathy. 2013. “Steal this Infographic: Librarians as Tech Leaders.” The Digital Shift, Library Journal. http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/12/k-12/steal-infographic/.

For more examples, see chapters 14 and 15 of the Chicago style citation handbook: The Chicago Manual of Style (17th Edition), or find more information available here .

To create references for a variety of sources, stop by our homepage and use our Chicago citation maker.

A Brief History of the Style

The Chicago format dates back to 1891 when the University of Chicago Press opened. The Press housed typesetters and compositors who were working on setting and deciphering complicated scientific material in fonts such as Hebrew and Ethiopic. A style sheet was devised with the aim of maintaining consistency throughout the typesetting process; from the typesetter, to the compositor, to the proofreader.

Over the years the ‘University Press stylebook and style sheet’ developed into a pamphlet used by the entire college community, before becoming a 200-page book in 1906: Manual of Style: Being a compilation of the typographical rules in force at the University of Chicago Press, to which are appended specimens of type in use – also known as the first edition of the Manual . Today’s thousand-page 16th edition Chicago style citation manual provides authors, editors, publishers, copywriters and proofreaders across the globe with the authoritative text on the style.

The Chicago style is continually evolving, with each edition undergoing revisions that reflect technological developments. For instance, the publication of the 13th edition in 1982 addressed the use of personal computers and word processors for the first time. When the World Wide Web became a global phenomenon in the 1990s, the very nature of research and communication shifted dramatically. The style’s editorial staff tackled this development by releasing a comprehensive 15th edition (2003) that incorporated the role of computer technology in the publishing industry by providing guidance on citing electronic sources.

The 16th edition of the Chicago citation manual (2010) was the first edition to be published both in hardcover and online. The manual reflects the changes undergone by the publishing industry in response to the digital age, and the subsequent evolution in the way in which authors and publishers work. It addresses a diverse range of source types that define academic publishing today; from URLs and DOIs to ebooks, Instagram and foreign languages, and provides comprehensive examples that illustrate how to cite online and digital sources.

The 16th edition also revamped the Chicago style citation system in order to move towards a more uniform style that closes the gap between the Notes-Bibliography and Author-Date systems. By recommending a single approach to each stylistic matter, rather than a myriad of confusing options and exceptions to the rule, the style offers efficient and logical solutions to the sometimes-complex citing process.

The 17th edition, released in 2017, is the latest edition. It includes minor changes, expansions on topics, and new referencing structures. It is no longer recommended to use the abbreviation ibid. (which is latin for “in the same place”) to mark repetitive references. Instead, shortened references, such as the ones in the examples towards the top of this page, are preferred. Furthermore, the website and blog sections were expanded to display additional examples and scenarios. Finally, structures and examples for numerous social media platforms and other online resources were added into the official manual.

Why is Citing Important?

Plagiarism occurs when a writer does not properly credit their source material; stealing the ideas or words of another and passing them off as one’s own is literary theft. Failure to acknowledge the sources upon which you’ve built your work is a breach of academic integrity, and this can result in a failed grade, expulsion from college or even legal action from the original author. The proper use of a referencing system, such as the Chicago format, protects writers from committing plagiarism and being accused of plagiarizing their work.

Both courtesy and copyright laws require you to identify the following in your work:

• Where you directly quote another author’s words
• Where you paraphrase or summarize another author’s words or ideas
• Where you include information, facts or ideas that are not generally known or easily checked

As a general rule, you must highlight any borrowed source material that might appear to be your own if it is not cited correctly. When in doubt, remember that it is much better to over-cite your work than under-cite.

It is important to bear in mind, however, that simply citing your sources does not keep your paper free from plagiarism. Plagiarism can occur if you use an exact quote but do not identify the exact quote as such with quotation marks even if you do cite it. Additionally, if you paraphrase a source but just change a few words here and there instead of making it your own, you could be committing plagiarism even with a citation. For more information on incorporating the work of others into your paper, the CMOS offers some helpful guidelines in sections 13.1-13.6.

The importance of attributing your research goes beyond avoiding plagiarism, and while it may seem like a tedious process, attributing and documenting your sources is an essential practice for all academic writers. The use of accurate Chicago style citations validate your work by demonstrating that you have thoroughly researched your chosen subject and found a variety of scholarly opinions and ideas to support, or challenge, your thesis. As an academic writer, your written work is a chance to engage in conversation with the scholars that you are citing by placing your own ideas in the context of the larger intellectual conversation about your topic. In correctly using citations, you also lead your reader directly to the sources you have consulted, thereby enabling them to form their own views on your opinions and appreciate your contribution to the topic.

Here at Cite This For Me we know that citing can be an arduous and time-consuming process. Luckily for you, you can work more efficiently by using the Cite This For Me Chicago style citation generator.

How Do I Know What Types of Sources I Should be Citing?

As you research and write your paper, you will come across all types of material. It is important to know what kinds of sources are appropriate for research papers and what types are not as you begin to write and cite the material you are building your research on. There are three kinds of sources that you will come across as you delve into your research topic:

• reference (sometimes called tertiary)

Each type of source has a different role to play in the research and writing process.

When you first begin to write, you will often have a broad topic or research question in mind. This is the perfect time to use reference sources to begin to understand the basics surrounding your topic and the current research on it.

Reference sources include those that summarize information about topics. You might read some pages on Wikipedia, check out an encyclopedia entry on your topic, look at a specialized dictionary entry (e.g., a literary or philosophical dictionary), or even read news articles that provide a concise overview of the topic at hand. These sources will help you to understand your topic broadly, but generally are not sources considered acceptable to cite in scholarly work. They are, however, excellent starting points and may point you to important and relevant scholarly literature you should read.

Primary Sources

An important part of research is finding and analyzing primary sources , or sources that provide original material about your given topic or question. What is considered to be a primary source will vary significantly depending on your field of research and the time period about which you are writing.

For example, if you are writing about Renaissance literature, a text by Shakespeare might be one of your primary sources. If you are studying Renaissance history, you might be looking at letters written during that time in an archive or published critical edition. If you are looking at modern current events, social media posts revealing reactions to these events or posting videos of the events might be your primary source. For social sciences, data collected through surveys might be your primary source. Primary sources provide the evidence for the argument you are going to make in your paper.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are sources that are aimed at scholars, well-researched, and generally based on primary sources. These are sources you will engage frequently in your research as they help to show your readers that you are informed on the topic, know what the current field of research looks like, and that you have considered multiple viewpoints on the topic before taking your stance. Secondary sources include scholarly books, journal articles, published reports, and other similar types of material.

Cite This For Me can help you handle citations for all of these types of sources.

How do I Accurately Cite My Sources with Cite This For Me?

Are you battling to get your Chicago citations finished in time? Feeling the pressure of imminent deadlines? Remove all the pain of citations with the Cite This For Me intuitive and accurate citation generator.

Cite This For Me is committed to educating academic writers across the globe in the art of accurate citing. We believe it is essential that you equip yourself with the knowledge of why you need to use a referencing system, how best to insert citations in the main body of your assignment, and how to accurately compile a bibliography. At first, referencing may seem like a waste of time when you would much rather be focusing on the actual content of your work, but after reading this extensive Chicago style citation guide we hope that you will see referencing as a valuable, lifelong skill that is worth honing.

Our multi-platform tool is designed to fulfill all of your referencing needs – whether you’re working at home, in the library, or on-the-go.

Sign up for free now to add and edit each Chicago citation on the spot, import and export full projects or individual entries, and save your work in the cloud. Or step it up a notch with our browser extension – work smarter by citing web pages, articles, books and videos directly from your browser while you research online.

Have you found a relevant book in the public library? Or stumbled across the perfect source to support your thesis in an archive? Wherever you are, cite your sources with the Cite This For Me website to formatted citations to your projects.

Stand on the shoulders of giants by accurately citing your source material using the Cite This For Me fast, accessible and free Chicago style citation maker.

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Published October 2, 2015. Updated June 5, 2020.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Please note that although these resources reflect the most recent updates in the The Chicago Manual of Style  (17 th  edition) concerning documentation practices, you can review a full list of updates concerning usage, technology, professional practice, etc. at  The Chicago Manual of Style Online .

Introduction

The Chicago Manual of Style  (CMOS) covers a variety of topics from manuscript preparation and publication to grammar, usage, and documentation, and as such, it has been lovingly dubbed the “editor's bible.”

The material on this page focuses primarily on one of the two CMOS documentation styles: the Notes-Bibliography System (NB) , which is used by those working in literature, history, and the arts. The other documentation style, the Author-Date System, is nearly identical in content but slightly different in form and is preferred by those working in the social sciences.

Though the two systems both convey all of the important information about each source, they differ not only in terms of the way they direct readers to these sources, but also in terms of their formatting (e.g., the position of dates in citation entries). For examples of how these citation styles work in research papers, consult our sample papers: 

Author-Date Sample Paper

NB Sample Paper

In addition to consulting  The Chicago Manual of Style  (17th edition) for more information, students may also find it useful to consult Kate L. Turabian's  Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations  (8th edition). This manual, which presents what is commonly known as the "Turabian" citation style, follows the two CMOS patterns of documentation but offers slight modifications suited to student texts.

Notes and Bibliography (NB) in Chicago style

The Chicago Notes and Bibliography (NB) system is often used in the humanities to provide writers with a system for referencing their sources through the use of footnotes, endnotes, and through the use of a bibliography. This offers writers a flexible option for citation and provides   an outlet for commenting on those sources, if needed. Proper use of the Notes and Bibliography system builds a writer’s credibility by demonstrating their accountability to source material. In addition, it can protect writers from accusations of plagiarism, which is the intentional or accidental uncredited use of source material created by others.

Introduction to Notes

In the Notes and Bibliography system, you should include a note (endnote or footnote) each time you use a source, whether through a direct quote, paraphrase, or summary. Footnotes are added at the end of the page on which the source is referenced, while endnotes are compiled at the end of each chapter or at the end of the entire document.

In either case, a superscript number corresponding to a note, along with the bibliographic information for that source, should be placed in the text following the end of the sentence or clause in which the source is referenced.

If a work includes a bibliography, which is typically preferred, then it is not necessary to provide full publication details in notes. However, if a bibliography is not included with a work, the first note for each source should include  all  relevant information about the source: author’s full name, source title, and facts of publication. If you cite the same source again, or if a bibliography is included in the work, the note only needs to include the surname of the author, a shortened form of the title (if more than four words), and the page number(s). However, in a work that does not include a bibliography, it is recommended that the full citation be repeated when it is first used in a new chapter.

In contrast to earlier editions of CMOS, if you cite the same source two or more times consecutively, CMOS recommends using shortened citations. In a work with a bibliography, the first reference should use a shortened citation which includes the author’s name, the source title, and the page number(s), and consecutive references to the same work may omit the source title and simply include the author and page number. Although discouraged by CMOS, if you cite the same source and page number(s) from a single source two or more times consecutively, it is also possible to utilize the word “Ibid.,” ( from the Latin ibidem, which means “in the same place,”) as the corresponding note. If you use the same source but a draw from different new page, the corresponding note should use “Ibid.” followed by a comma and the new page number(s).

In the NB system, the footnote or endnote itself begins with the appropriate full-sized number, followed by a period and then a space.

Introduction to Bibliographies

In the NB system, the bibliography provides an alphabetical list of all sources used in a given work. This page, most often titled Bibliography, is usually placed at the end of the work preceding the index. It should include all sources cited within the work and may sometimes include other relevant sources that were not cited but provide further reading.

Although bibliographic entries for various sources may be formatted differently, all included sources (books, articles, websites, etc.) are arranged alphabetically by author’s last name. If no author or editor is listed, the title or, as a last resort, a descriptive phrase may be used.

Though useful, a bibliography is not required in works that provide full bibliographic information in the notes.

Common Elements

All entries in the bibliography will include the author (or editor, compiler, translator), title, and publication information.

Author Names

The author’s name is inverted in the bibliography, placing the last name first and separating the last name and first name with a comma; for example, John Smith becomes Smith, John.

Titles of books and journals are italicized. Titles of articles, chapters, poems, etc. are placed in quotation marks .

Publication Information

The year of publication is listed after the publisher or journal name .

Punctuation

In a bibliography, all major elements are separated by periods.

For more information and specific examples, see the sections on  Books  and  Periodicals .

Please note that this OWL resource provides basic information regarding the formatting of entries used in the bibliography. For more information about Selected Bibliographies, Annotated Bibliographies, and Bibliographic Essays, please consult Chapter 14.61 of  The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition).

The Chicago Citation Style with biblatex

The biblatex-chicago package implements the citation style of the Chicago Manual of Style , 16th edition. In this example, the notes option causes biblatex's autocite command to put citations in footnotes. The package can also produce inline author-year citations in the Chicago style. See the package documentation for more information.

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“It’s Incredibly Naïve”

R. derek black has a warning for the left about antisemitism..

When R. Derek Black was a child, they were considered the heir to the white nationalist movement in America. Their father, Don, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, had created Stormfront, the legacy white supremacist website; Derek ran Stormfront’s corollary site for children, co-hosted a white nationalist radio show with their father, spoke at white nationalist conferences, and successfully won a Republican committee seat in Palm Beach County, Florida. Derek’s mother had been married to David Duke; Duke was Derek’s godfather.

But Derek’s life changed when they enrolled in New College of Florida. The Sarasota school is now known for its 2023 conservative political takeover by Christopher Rufo—a takeover Black lamented in a previous interview with Slate . But for most of its history, New College was a progressive haven. Black, while attending, lived a double life until they were outed on a studentwide email thread; what followed was a remarkable and successful student-led effort to convert Black, as documented in the 2018 book Rising Out of Hatred by the journalist Eli Saslow. In 2013, Black publicly renounced their former ideology and now speaks out publicly against it, while also pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Chicago researching proto-racism in early medieval intellectual history.

This singular life story is now the subject of Black’s memoir. The Klansman’s Son: My Journey From White Nationalism to Antiracism , which covers their childhood in the movement, their ideological transformation, the fallout, and their political awakening with the rise of Donald Trump, came out on Tuesday. Slate spoke with Black, who is transgender and now uses they/she pronouns, about their ideological journey, how they are thinking about student-led activism, the recent protest movement—and how they understand this moment in American politics, when the war in Gaza has realigned people on the left and the right. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Slate: How did you decide to write this book now, and why?

R. Derek Black: I thought about it for the first time shortly after the Trump election [in 2016]. About three years before that, I had written this public statement condemning my family, and I genuinely thought that would be the last time that I spoke publicly about anything. I was very happy that I had been able to find some kind of niche in academia in medieval history. And after wrestling with how much harm I had caused, I didn’t even understand how it could be an ethical choice to speak out publicly. But watching the Trump campaign, it started feeling sort of cowardly to not be speaking out, as opposed to a moral choice.

People asked me to write a book, and I chose not to. It didn’t feel right—I didn’t have enough context or distance from my family or the movement they built. And I didn’t understand how to think about the Trump movement in relation to white nationalism.

But after Biden won, I decided that this was the time. I had a strong sense that the far-right movement would likely surge, because that’s just historically how that works. And that’s what I would have been doing, had I been in the midst of it still; it just would have made sense as a strategy. With Jan. 6, once again, I had people interested in [a book]. Since January of 2021, I’ve been working on it.

How is your book different from the 2018 story of your conversion that’s told in Eli Saslow’s Rising Out of Hatred ?

When I first started writing this one, I wrote it as 13 essays about how people change their minds. My big understanding of my life is that our beliefs that are really core to us are the same thing as the community of people we care about. If we want to try to persuade somebody, the question is, then, w ho is the community of people they care about? How do they see themselves as being loyal and beholden to those people? Somebody changing their mind is changing the network of people that they feel responsible for.

I was trying to describe what it felt like to come into a community and have to change to maintain my sense of being a moral person in it. I’m trying to make an argument that my experience was fundamentally one of being grounded in different communities.

You come from a background that is both racist and deeply antisemitic. Do you have any insight into how that community is feeling about this moment where some on the right are accusing the anti-Zionist left of being antisemitic?

I remember, shortly after Oct. 7, I got texts from some of my siblings. They said, I bet now even your lefty friends are on our side . And what they meant by that was anti-Israel.

I have built these leftist circles who are adamantly protesting the Israeli government and coming up with this deep anti-colonialist discourse. And I feel deeply uneasy, because a large portion of my social circle is Jewish, and I’m seeing this kind of reaction that even in the best of times really does not seem to take seriously the discrimination and fear that Jewish people in America feel a lot of the time. I think there’s this idea among non-Jewish people on the left that I get incredibly frustrated with, that antisemitism is not an issue they need to be heavily worried about. They seem to take for granted that at least white-passing Jewish people aren’t facing fear or discrimination.

The way that I grew up makes it kind of impossible for me to think that antisemitism is not powerful, not just because my family was running an antisemitic movement, but because they were organizing and seeking out membership, and it was very easy . There was a wealth of people with much more low-key antisemitic views who were always ready to become a part of this movement. Antisemitism was the thread that really held [white nationalism] together as an ideology. Global racism and global segregation was, theoretically, the goal of white nationalism, but the more I look back on it, the more I recognize that the organizing principles that ties it together is antisemitism. And so it just feels incredibly naïve to dismiss how powerful antisemitism is in the modern world.

And I really get upset and angry because [organizers] are not taking into account antisemitic people on the far right coming in and infiltrating. I think that really advantages the antisemitic movement in the United States. Which, to be clear, is broad. If anyone is in a position where they’re organizing against the attack on Gaza, not giving a home to the antisemitic movement has to be just a fundamental priority of what you’re organizing.

I want to emphasize that I don’t see the protests as fundamentally antisemitic. But I am always very alarmed about the fact that antisemitism can easily attach itself to anything criticizing Israel.

On the other hand, there has been Islamophobia and at least one incident of overt anti-Black racism from counterprotesters. This is such a messy conflict, because you also have incidents where pro-Israel counterprotesters ally themselves with traditional fraternities , which have sometimes been overtly racist. It seems to me like this whole situation would delight white supremacists.

The power of the white nationalist movement is not that they have a ton of numbers. The reason they’ve been a powerful force in the United States and other countries since the 1950s as an organized movement is they tap into messages that exist in more latent ways in the rest of society. And they get involved in other, larger protest movements and are able to magnify their own message.

There is racism and antisemitism baked into so much of society that it appears even in the space where people are doing a liberatory protest. That is a perfect fertile ground; that’s exactly what white nationalists look for. And this is something that they’re really reveling in, the idea that criticism of Israel is so pervasive that they can take that and turn it into broader antisemitism.

Speaking of antisemitism being baked into society: Did you happen to see Marjorie Taylor Greene explained her vote against the “Antisemitism Awareness Act” by arguing it “could convict Christians of antisemitism” for believing Jews killed Jesus? This seems to be in step with the recent rhetorical movement on the far right to position antisemitism as being a basic element of Christianity.

I hadn’t heard the Marjorie Taylor Greene comment, but it feels like exactly the kind of thing that white nationalists want to emphasize: this sort of natural idea of antisemitism as being a part of Christianity. People ask a lot if white nationalists are Christians, and I want to emphasize that there are not a huge number of normal Christian people in white nationalism. It’s much more common for people to either be atheist, or be some sort of radical sect of Christianity, or to be some sort of religion they’ve created for themselves. A big part of that is because of how fundamental antisemitism is to them and how inherently morally complicated it is to be very antisemitic via traditional Christianity. On its face, Christianity is a problematic religion to be an antisemite within. It’s so fundamentally beholden to the Jewish tradition.

You use they/she pronouns. Can you share how your view of gender has evolved?

The only thing I think I regret about the book was around gender issues. It’s not a gender book, but I do feel bad there’s just a few little crumbs, because it’s become such a huge part of my life over the last few years. So I want to be more outspoken about it now. I do identify as trans. If anybody reads the book, know that you’re reading about the experience of somebody who along the way had complicated views of their own gender and fear of being outed.

Over the years, I just sort of forgot the difference between wanting something and not being able to do it. If I can’t do this, if it’s not safe to do it, then I must not want it. And in my late 20s and 30s, I reassessed and said, Well, maybe I can want something and assess whether it’s safe to do it. Understanding that has been a more recent part of my life.

Your story is a demonstration of how anyone can change. But do you think having your own struggles with gender identity made it so you could more easily exercise empathy than other white nationalists? Do you think your gender played a role?

I feel confident in saying that it is definitely not the explanation, because it was so hard to come to a place where I disagreed strongly and firmly and clearly with my family’s racism and antisemitism. And when I condemned it, there was no part of me that felt like I could come out with gender stuff, even though I had a lot of gender thoughts at that time. I didn’t feel like it was something that felt possible in any way, so it wasn’t something that was driving me.

But even if I didn’t think that I had any desire to ever live authentically, I still had the sense that  people have things about themselves they can’t change, and that to discriminate against them or to marginalize them is a very awful thing to do. … Maybe if you never have that feeling, it would become a lot harder to be open to individuals in the ways that ultimately undid my worldview.

To go back to the protests, gender seems to be playing a role in the politics of the backlash. Far-right commentators have noted how they seem to be led by women, and even made a point of arguing that the female protesters are ugly . Is that something you were familiar with in white nationalist politics?

I’m very familiar with that. Even when I was a kid, I remember arguing with white nationalists about this, like, just lay off. People have different aesthetic goals. White nationalists are not always conservative. They’re open to expansive social programs; they kind of want Medicare for all, but only for white people. But one thing that is very conservative is the idea that there are prescribed beauty and presentation roles. There are supposed to be ways that we all agree to be in the world, and if you break from them, you’re breaking the social contract. That kept me closeted, the idea that it doesn’t matter how you feel inside, what is important is we all are given these social prescriptions, and we all agree that to live in a society and feel safe and have enough resources and get along with each other, we all have to follow these rules about how we’re supposed to dress and what we’re supposed to be.

How seriously do you think people should be taking the white nationalist movement at this particular moment?

I think people should be taking it very, very seriously. And I know that that can sometimes feel a little alarmist, but there is always a potential for direct violence. And I don’t think there have been so many opportunities [for the movement] any time before in my lifetime. Most of my life, the American right has had lots of bulwarks against that kind of racism and antisemitism—and militant, anti-democratic strains. White nationalists want to overthrow this country and install some kind of new racial nationalist regime; I can’t think of any point in my lifetime when it felt like there were more figures within the mainstream Republican Party who were not willing to condemn that.

The thing that I’m most worried about, actually, is that there’s nothing really to stop us from having far-right politicians with a following, who also have private mercenary armies. That’s something that I don’t see Donald Trump doing, but I remember in 2020, I was living in D.C., and I was protesting in front of the White House most days. And he had called up all these security people from different divisions, the Bureau of Prisons and ICE and Border Patrol. In that chaotic moment, they didn’t have identification on them , they weren’t wearing uniforms, a lot of them were carrying weapons and standing around the White House, and they would spit on the ground and show how much distaste they had for us protesters. [Trump] tear-gassed the protesters so that he could go stand in front of the church; helicopters would come really low and sort of buzz the crowd . The fact that while he was willing to use that kind of force against people—It was then that it occurred to me that white nationalists have this vision of 1930s-style fascist politics with politicians with mercenaries that go and intimidate their enemies and people at the ballot boxes. And we’ve seen that a little bit, and there’s a real danger of it happening again in 2024. But there’s even more danger of it over time becoming a staple part of our country, where far-right politics embraces intimidation and violence and personal retribution. And I just don’t think I’ve seen any part of my lifetime where the United States felt more susceptible to that than now.

A new, low-cost, high-efficiency photonic integrated circuit

The rapid advancement in photonic integrated circuits (PICs), whichcombine multiple optical devices and functionalities on a single chip, has revolutionized optical communications and computing systems.

For decades, silicon-based PICs have dominated the field due to their cost-effectiveness and through their integration with existing semiconductor manufacturing technologies, despite their limitations with regard to their electro-optical modulation bandwidth. Nevertheless, silicon-on-insulator optical transceiver chips were successfully commercialized, driving information traffic through millions of glass fibers in modern datacenters.

Recently, the lithium niobate-on-insulator wafer platform has emerged as a superior material for photonic integrated electro-optical modulators due to its strong Pockels coefficient, which is essential for high-speed optical modulation. Nonetheless, high costs and complex production requirements, have kept lithium niobate from being adopted more widely, limiting its commercial integration.

Lithium tantalate (LiTaO 3 ), a close relative of lithium niobate, promises to overcome these barriers. It features similar excellent electro-optic qualities but has an advantage over lithium niobate in scalability and cost, as it is already being widely used in 5G radiofrequency filters by telecom industries.

Now scientists led by Professor Tobias J. Kippenberg at EPFL and Professor Xin Ou at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT) have created a new PIC platform based on lithium tantalate. The PIC leverages the material's inherent advantages and can transform the field by making high-quality PICs more economically viable. The breakthrough is published in Nature .

The researchers developed a wafer-bonding method for lithium tantalate, whichis compatible with silicon-on-insulator production lines. They then masked the thin-film lithium tantalate wafer with diamond-like carbon and proceeded to etch optical waveguides, modulators, and ultra-high quality factor microresonators.

The etching was achieved by combining deep ultraviolet (DUV) photolithography and dry-etching techniques, developed initially for lithium niobate and then carefully adapted to etch the harder and more inert lithium tantalate. This adaptation involved optimizing the etch parameters to minimize optical losses, a crucial factor in achieving high performance in photonic circuits.

With this approach, the team was able to fabricate high-efficiency lithium tantalate PICs with an optical loss rate of just 5.6 dB/m at telecom wavelength. Another highlight is the electro-optic Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM), a device widely used in today's high-speed optical fiber communication. The lithium tantalate MZM offers a half-wave voltage-length product of 1.9 V cm and an electro-optical bandwidth reaching 40 GHz.

"While maintaining highly efficient electro-optical performance, we also generated soliton microcomb on this platform," says Chengli Wang, the study's first author. "These soliton microcombs feature a large number of coherent frequencies and, when combined with electro-optic modulation capabilities, are particularly suitable for applications such as parallel coherent LiDAR and photonic computing."

The lithium tantalate PIC's reduced birefringence (the dependence of refractive index on light polarization and propagation direction) allows dense circuit configurations and ensures broad operational capabilities across all telecommunication bands. The work paves the way for scalable, cost-effective manufacturing of advanced electro-optical PICs.

• Telecommunications
• Electronics
• Computers and Internet
• Distributed Computing
• Information Technology
• Computer Graphics
• Circuit design
• Solar power
• Microchip implant (animal)
• Emerging technologies

Story Source:

Materials provided by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . Original written by Nik Papageorgiou. The original text of this story is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Chengli Wang, Zihan Li, Johann Riemensberger, Grigory Lihachev, Mikhail Churaev, Wil Kao, Xinru Ji, Junyin Zhang, Terence Blesin, Alisa Davydova, Yang Chen, Kai Huang, Xi Wang, Xin Ou, Tobias J. Kippenberg. Lithium tantalate photonic integrated circuits for volume manufacturing . Nature , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07369-1

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