Hybrid silicon evanescent lasers

Abstract

Silicon photonic platforms have been of great interest for the integration of photonic and electronic circuits on a silicon substrate. However, efficient light generation inside a silicon crystal has been the major obstacle due to the indirect bandgap characteristics of silicon. To overcome this problem, recently we demonstrated optically pumped hybrid silicon evanescent lasers, in which III-V based quantum wells are bonded to silicon rib waveguides. This approach enables to build active silicon photonic devices by combining high optical gain of Ill-V materials with well developed silicon processing technology. The work presented here is a first step of the future development of the electrically driven silicon active photonic devices as well as the photonic integration with electrical circuitry on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers.