Hybrid Microring Laser Research Articles

Investigation of hybrid microring lasers adhesively bonded on silicon wafer

Thermal characteristics are numerically investigated for the hybrid AlGaInAs/InP on silicon microring lasers with different ring radii and widths. Low threshold current and low active region temperature rise are expected for a microring laser with a narrow ring width. Based on the thermal analysis and the 3D simulation for mode characteristics, a hybrid AlGaInAs/InP on silicon microring lasers with an inner n-electrode laterally confined by the p-electrode metallic layer is fabricated using an adhesive bonding technique. A threshold current of 4 mA is achieved for a hybrid microring laser with a radius of 20 μm and a ring width of 3.5 μm at 12°C, and the corresponding threshold current density is as low as 1 kA/cm2. The influence of the location of silicon waveguide on output performance is studied experimentally for improving the output coupling efficiency. Furthermore, continuous-wave electrically injected lasing up to 55°C is realized for a hybrid microring laser with a radius of 30 μm and a ring width of 3 μm.

Mode Investigation for Hybrid Microring Lasers With Sloped Sidewalls Coupled to a Silicon Waveguide

Hybrid AlGaInAs/InP microring lasers with sloped sidewalls coupled to a silicon waveguide are investigated numerically and experimentally. The mode field distribution deviations for the microring resonator with the sloped sidewalls at different tilting angles are simulated by a 3-D finite-difference time-domain technique. Obvious enhancements of output coupling to the silicon waveguide and the active region optical confinement factor can be expected as the microresonator has a trapezoidal shape. A hybrid microring laser with a radius of 19 μm and a width of 2 μm is fabricated with the laser wafer bonded on a silicon-on-insulator wafer using the divinylsiloxane-benzocyclobutene (DVS-BCB) adhesive bonding technique. Continuous-wave electrically injected operation is realized at a tilting angle of -6° with the threshold currents of 7.8 and 9 mA at 12 °C and 22 °C. In addition, for a hybrid microring laser with a radius of 29 μm and a ring width of 2.5 μm, continuous-wave electrical operation up to 50 °C is achieved.

Hybrid III-V-on-Silicon Microring Lasers

ABSTRACTHybrid silicon laser is a promising solution to enable high-performance light source on large-scale, silicon-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs). As a compact laser cavity design, hybrid microring lasers are attractive for their intrinsic advantages of small footprint, low power consumption and flexibility in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), etc. Here we review recent progress in unidirectional microring lasers and device thermal management. Unidirectional emission is achieved by integrating a passive reflector that feeds laser emission back into laser cavity to introduce extra unidirectional gain. Up to 4X of device heating reduction is simulated by adding a metal thermal shunt to the laser to “short” heat to the silicon substrate through buried oxide layer (BOX) in the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate. Obvious device heating reduction is also observed in experiment.

Integrated Optoelectronic Devices on Silicon

ABSTRACTSilicon (Si) has been the dominating material platform of microelectronics over half century. Continuous technological advances in circuit design and manufacturing enable complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chips with increasingly high integration complexity to be fabricated in an unprecedently scale and economical manner. Conventional Si-based planar lightwave circuits (PLCs) has benefited from advanced CMOS technology but only demonstrate passive functionalities in most circumstances due to poor light emission efficiency and weak major electro-optic effects (e.g., Pockels effect, the Kerr effect and the Franz–Keldysh effect) in Si. Recently, a new hybrid III-V-on-Si integration platform has been developed, aiming to bridge the gap between Si and III-V direct-bandgap materials for active Si photonic integrated circuit applications. Since then high-performance lasers, amplifiers, photodetectors and modulators, etc. have been demonstrated. Here we review the most recent progress on hybrid Si lasers and high-speed hybrid Si modulators. The former include distributed feedback (DFB) lasers showing over 10 mW output power and up to 85 oC continuous-wave (cw) operation, compact hybrid microring lasers with cw threshold less than 4 mA and over 3 mW output power, and 4-channel hybrid Si AWG lasers with channel space of 360 GHz. Recently fabricated traveling-wave electro-absorption modulators (EAMs) and Mach-Zehnder interferometer modulators (MZM) on this platform support 50 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s data transmission with over 10 dB extinction ratio, respectively.