AsianScientist (Sep. 27, 2017) – Scientists in Hong Kong and the US have developed a method to create high-performance micron-sized lasers directly grown on silicon. They published their findings in the journal Optica.
Decades ago, the Moore’s law predicted that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. This prediction has held true in the past few decades, and the quest for ever smaller and more efficient semiconductor devices have been a driving force for technological advances.
Photonics, which are light- and laser-based components, are beginning to be integrated with silicon (Si) semiconductor wafers, although the size of these photonics require further miniaturization.
In this study, scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the University of California at Santa Barbara created small electrically-pumped micro-lasers that were grown on industry-standard silicon substrates using a method known as epitaxy.
The micro-lasers had a radius of 5 μm and a sub-milliamp threshold of 0.6 mA, emitting at the near-infrared (1.3 µm) range of the light spectrum. The thresholds and footprints of these lasers are orders of magnitude smaller than current lasers that are grown on Si.
“We demonstrated the smallest current-injection quantum dot lasers directly grown on industry-standard silicon. These lasers have low power consumption and high temperature stability,” said Professor Lau Kei May, Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor of the Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering at HKUST.
“The realization of high-performance micron-sized lasers directly grown on Si represents a major step toward utilization of direct III-V/Si epitaxy as an alternate option to wafer-bonding techniques as on-chip silicon light sources with dense integration and low power consumption.”
The article can be found at: Wan et al. (2017) 1.3 μm Submilliamp Threshold Quantum Dot Micro-lasers on Si.
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Source: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
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