Heterogenously-integrated semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) on the silicon photonics platform have demonstrated advantages such as on-line optical amplification、small figure size and high nonlinearity. While, maintaining high coupling efficiency and large fabrication tolerance at the same time for the coupling between the IIIV optical amplification section and silicon on insulator (SOI) waveguide is still a challenge. Although the edge coupling and abrupt coupling have less alignment accuracy requirements, the total coupling loss is still high due to the mode mismatching. The adiabatic taper structure demonstrates a low coupling loss while the starting width of the active taper is typically down to 100 nm (or even smaller). Especially, it will lead to an unstable mode distribution within the quantum well gain region when it is extended until 1 micron. In this paper, we propose a novel coupling structure involving a slanted active taper structure on top of a smoothly-bending Si waveguide. FDTD/EME simulation results demonstrate that the overall coupling efficiency can be optimized to a level of more than 98% even that the active taper width is up to 1 micron, and the confinement factor in the quantum well can still be stable around 3.8% overall the whole coupling structure. This structure can be beneficial to improve the saturation power of heterogeneous integrated SOA.
Among the various approaches to heterogeneous integration, micro transfer printing (MTP) is a practical and emerging heterogeneous integration method. Typically, the components integrated by MTP are thin-film components and the process of MTP usually requires a sacrificial layer and materials like photo resists as tethers to fix the components. In this work, we demonstrate a tetherless MTP method. We built a complete setup for MTP. We use this setup and a flexible thin-film PDMS stamp with micro-structures as a transfer medium to directly pick up active optical components from a dicing tape with ejector assistance, and then print them directly onto a silicon wafer substrate without any adhesive. And we only require van der Waals force to complete the entire MTP process. Experiments have demonstrated that this method can transfer active optical components of various sizes and thicknesses without contamination and the performance parameters of these components are not affected. The responsivity of avalanche photo diode tested by the manufacturer is 0.9A/W and tested after being transferred at -25V bias is 0.83 A/W. The dark current of the device after being transferred is 13nA at a bias of -13V, which is similar to the value tested by the manufacturer, both at the nanoampere level. We have also attempted to use this new MTP method to transfer an array of semiconductor optical amplifiers, which provides a way to transfer a large number of optical components of various sizes and thicknesses for the practical implications of product packaging and product’s application.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.