All-silicon photon emitter with colloidal PbS quantum dot in tunable microcavity

Abstract

An all-silicon tunable microcavity photon emitter with a colloidal PbS quantum dot (QD) as a light source is presented. The cavity size can be tuned by voltage application to the device with an air-bridge structure. When the resonant wavelength of the microcavity agrees with the emission wavelength of the involved QD, a photon is emitted towards the built-in optical waveguide. We prototyped the tunable microcavity by embedding multiple QDs under a sputtered Si layer on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. The tunable range of the microcavity was 123 meV, while the extinction ratio of the photon emission was 8.4 dB at 1.3 μm. We believe that this device is appropriate for the integration of quantum processing solid devices using silicon photonics technology.