Integrated tunable CMOS laser

Abstract

An integrated tunable CMOS laser for silicon photonics, operating at the C-band, and fabricated in a commercial CMOS foundry is presented. The III-V gain medium section is embedded in the silicon chip, and is hermetically sealed. The gain section is metal bonded to the silicon substrate creating low thermal resistance into the substrate and avoiding lattice mismatch problems. Optical characterization shows high performance in terms of side mode suppression ratio, relative intensity noise, and linewidth that is narrow enough for coherent communications.