Bufferless 1.5 µm III-V lasers grown on Si-photonics 220 nm silicon-on-insulator platforms

Abstract

Efficient III-V lasers directly grown on Si remain the “holy grail” for present Si-photonics research. In particular, a bufferless III-V laser grown on the Si-photonics 220 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform could seamlessly bridge the active III-V light sources with the passive Si-based photonic devices. Here we report on the direct growth of bufferless 1.5 µm III-V lasers on industry-standard 220 nm SOI platforms using metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Taking advantage of the constituent diffusivity at elevated growth temperatures, we first devised a MOCVD growth scheme for the direct hetero-epitaxy of high-quality III-V alloys on the 220 nm SOI wafers through synergizing the conventional aspect ratio trapping (ART) and the lateral ART methods. In contrast to prevalent epitaxy inside V-grooved pockets, our method features epitaxy inside trapezoidal troughs and thus enables the flexible integration of different III-V compounds on SOIs with different Si device layer thicknesses. Then, using InP as an example, we detailed the growth process and performed extensive study of the crystalline quality of the epitaxial III-V. Finally, we designed and fabricated both pure InP and InP/InGaAs lasers, and we achieved room-temperature lasing in both the 900 nm band and the 1500 nm band under pulsed optical excitation. Direct epitaxy of these in-plane and bufferless 1.5 µm III-V lasers on the 220 nm SOI platform suggests the imminent interfacing with Si-based photonic devices and the subsequent realization of fully integrated Si-based photonic circuits.