Electrically pumped continuous wave quantum dot lasers epitaxially grown on patterned, on-axis (001) Si.

Justin Norman,Tresa M Pollock,Jennifer Selvidge,Yating Wan,Patrick G Callahan,Kei May Lau,Qiang Li,M J Kennedy,John E Bowers,Mclean P Echlin,Arthur C Gossard,Alan Y Liu

doi:10.1364/oe.25.003927

Abstract

High performance III-V lasers at datacom and telecom wavelengths on on-axis (001) Si are needed for scalable datacenter interconnect technologies. We demonstrate electrically injected quantum dot lasers grown on on-axis (001) Si patterned with {111} v-grooves lying in the [110] direction. No additional Ge buffers or substrate miscut was used. The active region consists of five InAs/InGaAs dot-in-a-well layers. We achieve continuous wave lasing with thresholds as low as 36 mA and operation up to 80°C.

Highlights

As bandwidth consumption continues to rapidly increase globally, so too does the need for downscaling optical interconnect technologies to meet the need for high bandwidth densities within the datacenter
High performance III-V lasers at datacom and telecom wavelengths on on-axis (001) Si are needed for scalable datacenter interconnect technologies
We demonstrate electrically injected quantum dot lasers grown on on-axis (001) Si patterned with {111} vgrooves lying in the [110] direction

Summary

Introduction

As bandwidth consumption continues to rapidly increase globally, so too does the need for downscaling optical interconnect technologies to meet the need for high bandwidth densities within the datacenter. Epitaxial integration of III-V lasers on silicon represents an alternative that eliminates the native substrate cost and, if integrated as a front-end process on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer, eliminates the need for bonding. Due to their tolerance to the inherent crystalline defects of mismatched epitaxy, quantum dot lasers have shown promise for producing high performance lasers on silicon with low thresholds, long lifetimes, and continuous wave operation up to 119°C [2,3,4,5]. The following presents an approach for epitaxial III-V lasers on on-axis silicon that uses a vgroove silicon template showing, in conjunction with our simultaneously developed GaP/Si template [6,7,8], the first reported demonstration of room temperature (RT) continuous wave (CW) operation

Methods

Results

Conclusion