A hybrid integrated single-wavelength laser with silicon micro-ring reflector is demonstrated theoretically and
experimentally. It consists of a heterogeneously integrated III-V section for optical gain, an adiabatic taper for light
coupling, and a silicon micro-ring reflector for both wavelength selection and light reflection. Heterogeneous integration
processes for multiple III-V chips bonded to an 8-inch Si wafer have been developed, which is promising for massive
production of hybrid lasers on Si. The III-V layer is introduced on top of a 220-nm thick SOI layer through low-temperature
wafer-boning technology. The optical coupling efficiency of >85% between III-V and Si waveguide has
been achieved. The silicon micro-ring reflector, as the key element of the hybrid laser, is studied, with its maximized
reflectivity of 85.6% demonstrated experimentally. The compact single-wavelength laser enables fully monolithic
integration on silicon wafer for optical communication and optical sensing application.
We demonstrate electrically-pumped III-V quantum-well lasers bonded on SiO2 with a metal-coated etched-mirror. The metal-coated etched-mirror allow the lasers to be used as on-chip laser, but our process design make sure that it requires no additional fabrication step to fabricate the metal-coated etched mirror. The bonded III-V on SiO2 also permits tight laser mode confinement in the active region due to high index contrast between III-V and SiO2. Moreover, it promises a flexible choice of host substrate, in which the silicon substrate could also be replaced with other materials. The laser devices demonstrated have the lowest threshold of 50 mA, a maximum output power of 9 mW and a differential quantum efficiency of 27.6%.
Broadband antireflection coatings are commonly required in many silicon or III-V compound semiconductor based optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, photodetectors, and image sensors so as to enhance light conversion efficiency. Conventional approach using a single-layer antireflection coating is simple and commonly used in industry but it has a limited working bandwidth. To achieve broadband or even omni-directional characteristics, structures using thick graded refractive index (GRIN) multilayers or nanostructured surfaces which have equivalent graded refractive index profile have been proposed and demonstrated. In this paper, we will show our development of broadband antireflection for high index substrate using SiNx/SiO2 via inductively coupled plasma chemical vapour deposition (ICPCVD). Global optimization of thin-film broadband antireflection coating using adaptive simulated annealing is presented. Unlike the conventional optical coating design which uses the refractive index of available materials, the optimization approach used here decides the optimal values of the refractive index as well as the thickness of each layer. The first thin-film material optimization is carried out on the ICP-CVD machine operating at low temperature of 250°C by tuning the SiH4/N2 gas ratio. The demonstrated double layer antireflection thin film reduces the average reflectance of Si surface from ~32% to ~3.17% at normal incidence for wavelength range from 400 to 1100 nm. This optical thin-film design and material development can be extended to optical wavelength filters and integrated micro-GRIN devices.
We report a low-temperature (220°C) covalent bonding of InP-based epitaxy substrate to silicon substrate through a thin thermal oxide interlayer of around 20 nm. Our SiO2 interlayer is grown only on the silicon substrate, which avoids the challenge in obtaining high quality SiO2 film on III-V substrate. The 20 nm thin oxide is proved to be sufficient as the outgassing medium during the bonding process. It is found that the bonding has minimal effect on the transferred epitaxy layer. This is evident from the X-ray Diffraction and room temperature photoluminescence (PL) characterizations of the III-V sample before (as-grown) and after bonding, where no significant peak shifting or broadening is observed. The high resolution Transmission Electron Micrograph (HR-TEM) also reveals almost zero-defect atomic bonding between III-V and thermal oxide on silicon.
A new heterogeneously integrated III-V/Si laser structure is reported in this letter, which consists of a III-V
ridge waveguide gain section on silicon, III-V/Si optical vertical interconnect accesses (VIAs) and silicon-oninsulator
(SOI) nanophotonic waveguide sections. The III-V semiconductor layers are introduced on top of the 300
nm thick SOI layer through low temperature, plasma assisted direct wafer-bonding and etched to form III-V ridge
waveguide on silicon as the gain section. The optical VIA is formed by tapering the III-V and the beneath SOI in
the same direction with a length of 50 μm for efficient coupling of light down to the 600 nm wide silicon
nanophotonic waveguide or vice versa. Fabrication details and specification characterizations of this heterogeneous
III-V/Si Fabry–Pérot (FP) laser are given. The fabricated FP laser shows a continuous-wave lasing with a threshold
current of 65 mA at room temperature and the slope efficiency from single facet is 144 mW/A. The maximal single
facet emitting power is about 4.5 mW at a current of 100 mA and the side-mode suppression ratio is ~30 dB. This
new heterogeneously integrated III-V/Si laser structure demonstrated enables more complex laser configuration
with a sub-system on-chip for various applications.
Optically-pumped microsquare cavity laser on InP-based multiple-quantum-wells (MQW) material platform is demonstrated. Continuous wave operation is achieved for microsquare cavity with footprint as small as 4×4μm2. Numerical mode analysis and experimental characterization of the microsquare laser are conducted, and the results are compared with the commonly used microdisk cavity laser fabricated on the same platform. The microsquare laser shows a lower lasing threshold and infers a higher differential efficiency than the microdisk counterpart. The microsquare cavity laser has sufficiently high quality factor, and higher pumping injection efficiency due to the more evenly distributed field profile as compared to that of the microdisk. Experimental result also shows that the microsquare laser has better temperature stability than the microdisk. These results promise a potential alternative laser structure for onchip light source applications.
This paper presents an overview of graded refractive index optics based on dual-layer
ultrathin film technology and its application in integrated photonics as an on-chip lens for optical
coupling of nano-waveguide. The theoretical derivation and discussion shows the equivalence
between the dual-layer ultrathin film and a negative birefringent thin film and the influence of thin
film thickness and light incident angle on this equivalence. For experimental verification, a set of
dual-layer ultrathin films of titanium dioxide (TiO2) and aluminium oxide (Al2O3) are deposited on
silicon with different volume fractions. Characterization of refractive index and reflectance shows a
good agreement between the experiment and theoretical design, and suggests the graded refractive
index profile can be achieved via varying the volume faction of the dual-layer ultrathin film stack.
As an application example, a graded refractive index lens with aberration-correction based on the
above dual-layer thin film stack is designed and optimized for optical coupling between silicon
waveguide and optical fiber. The optical design indicates the multilayer thin-film stack with a proper
graded refractive index profile can serve as the passivation cladding on top of silicon waveguide but
collimate the light at the waveguide ends for optical coupling to fiber with an estimated efficiency
~89%.
An ultrasmall plasmonic coaxial laser made of metal–semiconductor–metal on a silicon substrate through an interlayer bonding was designed. From the effective refractive indices and the transparent material gain, the nanoscale structural dimensions with both the radius and the width at 80 nm for the coaxial plasmonic waveguide were decided. The influence of the interlayer bonding material on the optimization of resonant wavelength and Q-factor was evaluated. A three-dimensional body-of-revolution finite-difference time-domain method was used to show that a coaxial cavity with a SiO 2 interlayer can laze at around 1480-nm wavelength with a net optical threshold power density of about 800 W/cm 2 and a subwavelength mode volume of 0.014(λ/2n) 3 . This nanolaser on silicon platform will benefit those working on nanophotonic integrated circuits.
We presented the design of metallic-semiconductor nanolasers based on ring configuration lasing at around 1450 nm wavelength. The design and simulation of the nanolaser are done with 3D body-of-revolution (BOR) finite-differencetime- domain (FDTD) simulator based on a multi-level multi-electron system. Both passive cavity optimization and active laser simulation are carried out. New results are reported, but to be more comprehensive we also review some of our previous results. For the smallest design, which corresponds to one resonance order in the cavity, the total footprint of the nanolaser is only about 0.038 μm2, and the physical device volume and the mode volume are only about 1.1(λ/2n)3 and 0.001(λ/2n)3, respectively, where n is the average index of the gain material. This device by us is the smallest reported to date, to the best of our knowledge. We also design for higher resonance orders that have larger dimensions and better fabrication feasibility, as well as taking into consideration the fabrication tolerances. All these are presented in the paper.
An on-chip light source plays a determinant role in the realization of integrated photonic chips for optical
interconnects technology. Several integration schemes of III/V laser on SOI platform for on-chip laser application
have been proposed and demonstrated. However, most of those integration approaches do not provide effective
solutions for the following two problems: effective light confinement/amplification in the III/V active region; and
efficient light transfer/coupling between silicon and III/V waveguide. In this paper, a novel approach to integrate
an ultra-compact Lateral-Current-Injection (LCI) laser on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform by direct wafer
bonding technique is proposed and designed. The proposed LCI device has an ultra-thin thickness of 270 nm which
is ~10 times thinner than the vertical current injection laser bonded on silicon. It has a confinement factor in the
active region larger than 40% for 1 μm wide III/V active waveguide, which is the highest among all the other
integration schemes proposed so far. An optical vertical interconnect access to transfer light efficiently between
III/V and silicon layer is designed. The design of the shortest “Optical Via” of 4 μm which gives ~100% coupling
efficiency is presented.
As the basic building block for photonic device integration, silicon nanophotonic waveguide requires low-loss
propagation for high-performance ultra-compact photonic device. We experimentally study SiO2 grown by two different
methods (thermal oxidation and PECVD) as hard masks for Si nano-waveguides fabrication and study their effects on
propagation loss. It was found that the denser and smoother quality of thermally grown SiO2 will increase the etch
selectivity of Si and reduce the line-edge roughness transferred to the Si nanowaveguide sidewall, hence giving a lower
loss compared to having PECVD SiO2 hard mask. With thermally grown SiO2 as hard mask, the Si nano-waveguides
loss can have a loss reduction as high as 5.5 times for a 650 nm wide nanowaveguide. Using thermally grown SiO2 as
hard mask will allow the Si nano-waveguide to have as low a propagation loss as direct resist mask and enable III-V
semiconductor on silicon via bonding for multifunctional photonic system on chip.
An effective simulation and design platform is presented in this paper for semiconductor plasmonic nanodisk laser. The three-dimensional laser structure is modeled and simulated with a body-of-revolution finite-difference-timedomain (BOR-FDTD) combined with the multi-level gain medium model and the Drude-Lorentz metal model, which gives a comprehensive spatial and temporal electromagnetic simulation of the nano-cavity and its lasing performance above the threshold. A semiconductor plasmonic nano-disk laser embedded in silver film is designed and the spatial and temporal lasing performance is numerically demonstrated. The physical volume of the nanodisk laser is only 1.17 (λ/2n)3 (a diameter of 200 nm and a height of 300 nm) and it has lasing wavelength at 1400 nm with a pumping threshold of 0.4 μW.
Silicon nanophotonic platform based on a silicon-on-insulator substrate enables dense photonic integration due to transparency for light propagation and ultra-high refractive index contrast for light confinement. Here, we integrate silicon together with III-V for high-efficiency heterogeneous Silicon/III-V and short vertical optical interconnect access. The fabrication involves 3 critical processes: 1) obtaining more than 80% maximum bonded areas of Si with III-V, 2) precise alignment of III-V nano-devices on top of the passive devices and 3) vertical sidewall etch profile of Si and III-V devices. The measurement results show around 90% coupling efficiency. The realization of this heterogeneous Si/III-V integration platform will open up enormous opportunities for photonic system on silicon through integrating various devices.
Wavelength measurement or monitoring can be implemented using a ratiometric power measurement technique. A
ratiometric wavelength monitor normally consists of a Y-branch splitter with two arms: an edge filter arm with a well
defined spectral response and a reference arm or alternatively, two edge filters arms with opposite slope spectral
responses. In this paper, a simple configuration for an integrated ratiometric wavelength monitor based on a single
multimode interference structure is proposed. By optimizing the length of the MMI and the two output port positions,
opposite spectral responses for the two output ports can be achieved. The designed structure demonstrates a spectral
response suitable for wavelength measurement with potentially a 10 pm resolution over a 100 nm wavelength range.
Many fiber Bragg grating interrogation systems uses ratiometric wavelength measurement based on an edge filter. In any
ratiometric scheme a 3dB coupler is a vital component which splits the signal and makes the system ratiometric. All
commercial 3dB couplers exhibit a wavelength dependency and polarization dependent loss. In this paper the effects of
the wavelength dependency and polarization dependent loss of the 3dB coupler in a ratiometric wavelength measurement
system are investigated using both simulation and experimental techniques. The ratio response of the system is simulated
considering the wavelength dependency of the coupler and is compared with that of a response with a wavelength
independent coupler. A comparison study of the polarization induced ratio fluctuation and corresponding errors in
wavelength with a polarization insensitive 3 dB coupler (very low PDL) and an ordinary 3 dB coupler is also presented.
The results show that the 3 dB coupler has a significant influence on the ratio response and accuracy of a ratiometric
wavelength measurement system.
For an all-fiber edge filter used in a rapid wavelength measurement system for optical sensing, a
low polarization dependent loss (PDL) is required to ensure high measurement accuracy. The
calculation of the bend loss for the TE and TM modes based on scalar approximations results in a
discrepancy between the calculated PDLs and measured results. Here a full vectorial finite difference
beam propagation method (FV FD-BPM) is used to compute the complex propagation constant and the
field distributions of the TE and TM modes in the bending fiber, allowing the accurate calculation of
the PDL of bending fiber.
Theoretical analysis and experimental investigations are presented on the resolution of a ratiometric wavelength measurement system. Theoretical modelling indicates that the resolution of a ratiometric wavelength measurement system is determined by the signal-to-noise ratio of the input signal and the noise of the photodetectors associated with optical-to-electronic conversion. For the experimental verification, a ratiometric system employing a macrobending standard singlemode fiber is developed and corresponding results are in a good agreement with the theoretical prediction.
Multimode interference occurring in a singlemode-multimode-singlemode fiber structure is numerically investigated with a wide-angle beam propagation method using the cylindrical coordinate. Two application examples in optical sensing are presented. 1) The wavelength sensitivity of the singlemode-multimode-singlemode structure is utilized and with an appropriate length of the multimode fiber section, the device is developed as an edge filter for a ratiometric wavelength measurement system. 2) When the multimode fiber cladding is removed, it becomes the singlemode-multimode core-singlemode structure and can be developed as an all-fiber refractometer sensor with an optimal length of multimode core section. The designed refractometer can offer an estimated resolution of about 5.4x10-5 for refractive index from 1.33 to 1.45, which is competitive as compared to existing waveguide based optical refractometer sensors while offering a much simpler configuration.
A fast 2x2 free-space photonic switch based on ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) is demonstrated with switching times of
order of microseconds. An examination of the insertion loss and crosstalk properties of the switch reveals an average loss
and crosstalk of < 0.45 dB and -33 dB, respectively. Such low-loss and low-crosstalk properties indicate that the switch
is suitable for a larger-scale matrix switch design. We discuss incorporation of the demonstrated switch into a multistage
network configuration and the properties of optical components required for achieving up to 1000 channel matrix
switches.
This paper investigates the temperature dependence of a multi turn bend loss component based on SMF28. Papers investigating the bend loss effect, also known as macro bending, have been widely published with regard to eliminating or minimising the effect. Investigation of the effect especially multiple small diameter turns has had little attention. A mandrel of diameter 28m was wrapped 1.5meters of SMF28 and the insertion loss measured. The temperature dependence of the insertion loss was then investigated.
Theoretical modeling of macro-bend losses for a single mode fiber is firstly presented. Macro-bend losses for standard single mode fibers (SMF28) are investigated theoretically and experimentally. The agreement between theoretical calculation results and experimental measured results suggests that 1) most of the radiation field is absorbed in the inner coating layer of SMF28 and 2) so-called elastooptical correction is not required for SMF28.
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