Abstract
Semiconductor lasers, an important subfield of semiconductor photonics, have fundamentally changed many aspects of our lives and enabled many technologies since their creation in the 1960s. As in other semiconductor-based fields, such as microelectronics, miniaturization has been a constant theme, with nanolasers being an important frontier of research over the last decade. We review the progress, existing issues, and future prospects of nanolasers, especially in relation to their potential application in chip-scale optical interconnects. One of the important challenges in this application is minimizing the size and energy consumption of nanolasers. We begin with the application background of this challenge and then compare basic features of various semiconductor lasers. We present existing issues with nanolasers and discuss potential solutions to meet the size and energy-efficiency challenge. Our discussions cover a broad range of miniaturized lasers, including plasmonic nanolasers and lasers with two-dimensional monolayer gain materials, with focus on near-infrared wavelengths.
Highlights
The research field of semiconductor lasers is at the very core of the larger field of semiconductor photonics
Semiconductor lasers have fundamentally altered the technology landscape and contributed greatly to our modern lifestyle—from miniature semiconductor lasers that are ubiquitous in many tech gadgets to the lasers that serve as workhorses within
This paper presents an analysis and summary of the aforementioned challenges in semiconductor laser research, with focus on one of the frontiers of the field, namely, semiconductor nanolasers
Summary
The research field of semiconductor lasers is at the very core of the larger field of semiconductor photonics ( known as optoelectronics). This is a field encompassing both fundamental science and a wide range of important technologies. Light–semiconductor interaction plays a foundational role in understanding semiconductors as gain media. The development of semiconductor lasers since the early 1960s has played an important role in our understanding of the basic optical properties of semiconductors and has revealed a wealth of important physical phenomena over the last five decades or so. Semiconductor lasers have fundamentally altered the technology landscape and contributed greatly to our modern lifestyle—from miniature semiconductor lasers that are ubiquitous in many tech gadgets (such as CD/DVD players, sensors in our smartphones, and bar-code scanners) to the lasers that serve as workhorses within
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