Monolithic integration of III–V materials and devices on CMOS compatible on‐axis Si (001) substrates enables a route of low‐cost and high‐density Si‐based photonic integrated circuits. Inversion boundaries (IBs) are defects that arise from the interface between III–V materials and Si, which significantly lowers the quality of III–V materials on Si. Here, a novel technique to achieve IB‐free GaAs monolithically grown on on‐axis Si (001) substrates by realizing the alternating straight and meandering single atomic steps on Si surface has been introduced via all-molecular beam epitaxy approach without the use of double Si atomic steps, which was previously believed to be the key for IB‐free III–V growth on Si. The periodic straight and meandering single atomic steps on Si surface are results of high‐temperature annealing of Si buffer layer. As a demonstration, an electrically pumped InAs quantum‐dot laser has been fabricated based on this IB‐free GaAs/Si platform with a maximum operating temperature of 120 °C. These results can be a major step towards monolithic integration of III–V materials and devices with the mature CMOS technology.
A method of hybrid integration of quantum dot microdisk lasers with silicon wafer is proposed and realized. In addition to the possibility of combining microlasers with various silicon-based electronic and photonic devices, this makes it possible to significantly improve heat removal from the active region of the microlaser. The thermal resistance normalized to the mesa area reaches the level of about 0.002 (K/W)*cm2, which is significantly lower than the corresponding values of QD microlasers on GaAs substrate and monolithically grown on Si. As a result, the threshold current as well as current-induced shift of emission wavelength are reduced in continuous-wave regime.
Monolithic integration of III–V semiconductor materials on planar on-axis silicon (001) is one of the most promising method for low-cost and scalable photonic integrated circuits. Here, we present InAs/GaAs quantum dots microdisk lasers monolithically grown on on-axis Si (001) substrate with ultra-low lasing threshold under room-temperature continues-wave optical pumping. The promising lasing characteristics of the microdisk lasers with ultra-low threshold and small footprint represent a major advance towards large-scale, low-cost integration of laser sources on silicon-based platform.
A combination of high operation temperatures and small sizes of diode lasers directly grown on silicon substrates is essential for their application in future photonic integrated circuits. In this work, we report on electrically-pumped III-V microdisk lasers monolithically grown on Si substrates with active regions of two kinds: either an InGaAs/GaAs quantum well (QW) or InAs/InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs). Microdisk resonators were defined using photolithography and plasma chemical etching. The active region diameter was varied from 11 to 31 µm. Microlasers were tested without external cooling at room and elevated temperatures.
The QW laser structure was epitaxially grown by MOCVD on silicon (100) with an intermediate MBE-grown Ge buffer. Under pulsed injection (0.5-µs-long injection pulses with 150 Hz repetition rate), lasing is achieved in QW microlasers with diameters of 23-31 µm with a minimal threshold current density of 28 kA/cm^2. Quasi-single mode lasing (SMSR is up to 20 dB) is observed with emission wavelength around 988 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantum well electrically-pumped microdisk lasers monolithically deposited on (001)-oriented Si substrate. Quantum wells are typically characterized by high optical gain and high direct modulation bandwidth, which can be important in view of further miniaturization of microlasers and their future application. The sidewall passivation can be helpful to reduce the threshold current.
As compared to QWs, quantum dots demonstrate reduced sensitivity to threading dislocations and other crystalline defects as well as to sidewall recombination owing to a suppressed lateral transport of charge carriers which prevents their diffusion towards non-radiate recombination centers. The QD laser structure was directly grown by MBE on Si (001) substrate with 4° offcut to the [011] plane. QD microlasers were tested at room temperature in CW regime with a DC current varied from 0 to 50 mA and at elevated temperatures under CW and pulsed excitation (0.5-µs-long injection pulses with 10 kHz repetition rate). The InAs/InGaAs QDs active region provides the wavelengths in the 1.32–1.35 µm spectral interval. At room temperature, lasing is achieved in microlasers with diameters of 14-30 µm with a minimal threshold current density of 600 A/cm2 (compare with that of 427 A/cm2 in edge-emitting laser). The threshold current density and specific thermal resistance of 0.004 °C×cm^2/mW are comparable to those of high-quality QD microdisk lasers on GaAs substrates. Lasing wavelength demonstrates low sensitivity to current-induced self-heating. Lasing is single mode (SMSR 20 dB) with a dominant mode linewidth as narrow as 30 pm. Under CW excitation lasing sustains up to 60 °C in microlasers with diameter of 30 µm. Because of self-heating, an actual temperature of the active region is close to 100°C. Under pulsed excitation, the maximal lasing temperature is 110°C. To our best knowledge, these are the smallest microlasers on silicon operating at such elevated temperatures ever reported. Up to 90°C lasing proceeds on the ground state optical transition of QDs with wavelength about 1.35 µm. At higher temperatures, lasing wavelength jumps to the excited state transition.
The realization of efficient III-V lasers directly grown on Si substrates is highly desirable for large-scale and low-cost silicon based optoelectronic integrated circuits. However, it has been hindered by the high threading dislocation (TD) density generated at the interface between III-V compounds and Si substrates. Introducing dislocation filter layers (DFLs) to suppress the TD propagation into the active region becomes a key factor for realising lasers with advanced performance. In this paper, optimization of InGaAs/GaAs DFLs in III-V quantum dot (QD) lasers on Si is demonstrated. Based on these optimized DFLs and other strategies, we have achieved a high performance electrically pumped QD laser on a Si substrate with threshold current density of 62.5 A cm-2, over 105 mW output power, maximum operation temperature of 120 °C and over 100,158 h of extrapolated lifetime.
We report on high quality GaAs-on-Si layers with low threading dislocations obtained by a combination of nucleation layer and dislocation filter layers using the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth method. As a result, we achieved a Si-based electrically pumped 1.3 μm InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) laser that lases up to 111°C with a lasing threshold of 200 A/cm2, and a single facet output power exceeding 100 mW at room temperature. In addition to Si-based lasers, we also demonstrated the first Si-based InAs/GaAs QD superluminescent light-emitting diode (SLD), from which a close-to-Gaussian emission with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of ~114 nm centered at ~1258 nm and maximum output power of 2.6 mW has been achieved.
Lattice-mismatched 1.7eV Al0.2Ga0.8As photovoltaic solar cells have been monolithically grown on Si substrates using Solid Source Molecular Beam Epitaxy (SSMBE). As a consequence of the 4%-lattice-mismatch, threading dislocations (TDs) nucleate at the interface between the Si substrate and III-V epilayers and propagate to the active regions of the cell. There they act as recombination centers and degrade the performances of the cell. In our case, direct AlAs/GaAs superlattice growth coupled with InAlAs/AlAs strained layer superlattice (SLS) dislocation filter layers (DFLSs) have been used to reduce the TD density from 1×109cm-2 to 1(±0.2)×107cm-2. Lattice-matched Al0.2Ga0.8As cells have also been grown on GaAs as a reference. The best cell grown on silicon exhibits a Voc of 964mV, compared with a Voc of 1128mV on GaAs. Fill factors of respectively 77.6% and 80.2% have been calculated. Due to the lack of an anti-reflection coating and the non-optimized architecture of the devices, relatively low Jsc have been measured: 7.30mA.cm-2 on Si and 6.74mA.cm-2 on GaAs. The difference in short-circuit currents is believed to be caused by a difference of thickness between the samples due to discrepancies in the calibration of the MBE prior to each growth. The bandgap-voltage offset of the cells, defined as Eg/q-Voc, is relatively high on both substrates with 736mV measured on Si versus 572mV on GaAs. The non-negligible TD density partly explains this result on Si. On GaAs, non-ideal growth conditions are possibly responsible for these suboptimal performances.
We introduce the concept of using strained superlattice structures as defect filters, with their purpose to reduce the upwards propagation of dislocations that result from the lattice mismatch which occurs when III-V materials are grown on silicon substrates. Three samples with defect filter layers are grown on Si with and without in situ annealing and are compared to a similar structure grown on a GaAs substrate. Transmission electron microscopy is used to verify the effectiveness of the different designs grown on Si, with the twice-annealed sample reducing the number of defects present in the active region by 99.9%. Optical studies carried out exhibit brighter room temperature emission and reduced photoluminescence quenching with temperature in samples where annealing is performed. Photoluminescence excitation measurements reveal a ~20 meV redshift in the position of the GaAs exciton for the samples grown on Si compared to that of GaAs, indicating a residual inplane tensile strain ~0.35% in the GaAs of the active region for the samples grown on Si.
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