Reducing dislocations for room-temperature continuous-wave InGaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well lasers monolithically grown on Si

Abstract

As dislocation-sensitive light-emitting devices, quantum well lasers monolithically grown on Si substrates operate poorly compared to their counterparts on native ones. In this work, a GaAs/Si virtual substrate with a low threading dislocation density of 8.9 × 10⁶/cm² was achieved by using a combined dislocation-reducing method. Meanwhile, by using two In-containing strained layer separately inserted into upper and lower AlGaAs cladding layers, the active region was virtually free of gliding dislocations. With the reduced dislocations in the active region, the fabricated Si-based broad-stripe ridged lasers exhibited continuous-wave lasing at room temperature, and a low threshold current density of 1015 A/cm², high operation temperature of 90 °C as well as a device lifetime of over 87.25 h were achieved. These results demonstrate an experimentally feasible way to optimize a Si-based InGaAs/AlGaAs quantum well laser and further promote the research on monolithic integration.