InP Microdisk Lasers Integrated on Si for Optical Interconnects

Abstract

We review recent theoretical and experimental work on InP membrane microdisk lasers heterogeneously integrated on SOI and coupled to a Si bus waveguide. The lasers can now be fabricated with very high yield, have typical threshold currents of 0.5 mA and output powers of tens of μW, while the total power consumption is restricted to 5 mW. First, we describe various improvements in the fabrication technology and interesting results on the uniformity in device characteristics. In a second part, unidirectional behaviour and reflection sensitivity are briefly discussed. The third part is focused on optical signal regeneration with microdisk lasers. The last part contains a brief summary of optical interconnects based on heterogeneously integrated microdisk lasers and heterogeneously integrated photodetectors.