Photonic-crystal lasers on silicon for chip-scale optical interconnects

Koji Takeda; Takuro Fujii; Akihiko Shinya; Eiichi Kuramochi; Masaya Notomi; Koichi Hasebe; Takaaki Kakitsuka; Shinji Matsuo

doi:10.1117/12.2208312

7 March 2016 Photonic-crystal lasers on silicon for chip-scale optical interconnects

Koji Takeda, Takuro Fujii, Akihiko Shinya, Eiichi Kuramochi, Masaya Notomi, Koichi Hasebe, Takaaki Kakitsuka, Shinji Matsuo

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9767, Novel In-Plane Semiconductor Lasers XV; 976710 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2208312
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2016, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Optical interconnects are expected to reduce the power consumption of ICT instruments. To realize chip-to-chip or chip-scale optical interconnects, it is essential to fabricate semiconductor lasers with a smaller energy cost. In this context, we are developing lambda-scale embedded active-region photonic-crystal (LEAP) lasers as light sources for chip-scale optical interconnects. We demonstrated the first continuous-wave (CW) operation of LEAP lasers in 2012 and reported a record low threshold current and energy cost of 4.8 μA and 4.4 fJ/bit at 10 Gbit/s in 2013. We have also integrated photonic crystal photodetectors on the same InP chip and demonstrated waveform transfer along 500-μm-long waveguides. Although LEAP lasers exhibit excellent performance, they have to be integrated on Si wafers for use as light sources for chip-scale optical interconnects. In this paper, we give a brief overview of our LEAP lasers on InP and report our recent progress in fabricating them on Si. We bonded the InP wafers with quantum-well gain layers directly on thermally oxidized Si wafers and performed all process steps on the Si wafer, including high-temperature regrowth. After this process modification, we again achieved CW operation and obtained a threshold current of 57 μA with a maximum output power of more than 3.5 μW at the output waveguides. An output light was successfully guided through 500 × 250-nm InP waveguides.

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Koji Takeda, Takuro Fujii, Akihiko Shinya, Eiichi Kuramochi, Masaya Notomi, Koichi Hasebe, Takaaki Kakitsuka, and Shinji Matsuo "Photonic-crystal lasers on silicon for chip-scale optical interconnects", Proc. SPIE 9767, Novel In-Plane Semiconductor Lasers XV, 976710 (7 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2208312

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