Abstract
Large-scale computer installations are severely limited by network-bandwidth constraints and energy costs that arise from architectural designs originally based on copper interconnects1. Wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) photonic links can increase the network bandwidth but are sensitive to environmental perturbations and manufacturing imperfections that can affect the precise emission wavelength and output power of laser transmitters2,3. Here, we demonstrate a new design of a three-terminal hybrid III–V-on-silicon laser that integrates a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor into the laser cavity. The MOS capacitor makes it possible to introduce the plasma-dispersion effect4 and thus change the laser modal refractive index and free-carrier absorption (FCA) loss to tune the laser wavelength and output power, respectively. The approach enables a highly energy efficient method to tune the output power and wavelength of microring lasers, with future prospects for high-speed, chirp-free direct laser modulation. The concept is potentially applicable to other diode laser platforms.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Miller, D. A. B. Device requirements for optical interconnects to silicon chips. Proc. IEEE 97, 1166–1185 (2009).
Fang, W. et al. Analysis of temperature sensitivity in semiconductor lasers using gain and spontaneous emission measurements. Appl. Phys. Lett. 70, 796–798 (1997).
Tee, C. W., Williams, K. A., Penty, R. V. & White, I. H. Fabrication-tolerant active–passive integration scheme for vertically coupled microring resonator. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 12, 108–116 (2006).
Soref, R. & Bennett, B. Electrooptical effects in silicon. IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 23, 123–129 (1987).
Kachris, C. & Tomkos, I. A survey on optical interconnects for data centers. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutorials 14, 1021–1036 (2012).
Beausoleil, R. G., McLaren, M. & Jouppi, N. P. Photonic architectures for high-performance data centers. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 19, 3700109 (2013).
Taubenblatt, M. A. Optical interconnects for high-performance computing. J. Lightw. Technol. 30, 448–457 (2012).
Reed, G. T., Mashanovich, G., Gardes, F. Y. & Thomson, D. J. Silicon optical modulators. Nat. Photon. 4, 518–526 (2010).
Michel, J., Liu, J. & Kimerling, L. C. High-performance Ge-on-Si photodetectors. Nat. Photon. 4, 527–534 (2010).
Liang, D. & Bowers, J. E. Recent progress in lasers on silicon. Nat. Photon. 4, 511–517 (2010).
Fang, A. W. et al. Hybrid silicon evanescent devices. Mater. Today 10, 28–35 (2007).
Roelkens, G. et al. III–V/Si photonics by die-to-wafer bonding. Mater. Today 10, 36–43 (2007).
Duan, G.-H. et al. Hybrid III–V on silicon lasers for photonic integrated circuits on silicon. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 20, 158–170 (2014).
Liang, D., Fiorentino, M., Srinivasan, S., Bowers, J. E. & Beausoleil, R. G. Low threshold electrically-pumped hybrid silicon microring lasers. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 17, 1528–1533 (2011).
Van Campenhout, J. et al. A compact SOI-integrated multiwavelength laser source based on cascaded InP microdisks. IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 20, 1345–1347 (2008).
Nitta, C., Farrens, M. & Akella, V. Addressing system-level trimming issues in on-chip nanophotonic networks. In 17th Int. Symp. High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) 122–131 (IEEE, 2011).
Liu, L. et al. A thermally tunable III–V compound semiconductor microdisk laser integrated on silicon-on-insulator circuits. IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 22, 1270–1272 (2010).
Liang, D. et al. Electrically-pumped compact hybrid silicon microring lasers for optical interconnects. Opt. Express 17, 20355–20364 (2009).
Pasquariello, D. & Hjort, K. Plasma-assisted InP-to-Si low temperature wafer bonding. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 8, 118–131 (2002).
Liang, D. et al. Uniformity study of wafer-scale InP-to-silicon hybrid integration. Appl. Phys. A 103, 213–218 (2011).
Li, Y. et al. Room temperature wafer bonding by surface activated ALD–Al2O3 . ECS Trans. 50, 303–311 (2013).
Dai, D., Fang, A. W. & Bowers, J. E. Hybrid silicon lasers for optical interconnects. New J. Phys. 11, 125016 (2009).
Kobayashi, N. et al. Silicon photonic hybrid ring-filter external cavity wavelength tunable lasers. J. Lightw. Technol. 33, 1241–1246 (2014).
Zheng, X. et al. Efficient WDM laser sources towards terabyte/s silicon photonic interconnects. J. Lightw. Technol. 31, 4142–4154 (2013).
He, J.-J. et al. Simple and compact tunable semiconductor lasers based on novel half-wave coupler. In SPIE Proc. (eds Eldada, L. A., El-Hang, L. & Sailing, H.) 93660C (SPIE, 2015).
Liang, D. et al. A tunable hybrid III–V-on-Si MOS microring resonator with negligible tuning power consumption. In The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition Paper Th1K.4 (OSA, 2016).
Peng, Z., Fattal, D., Fiorentino, M. & Beausoleil, R. G. Fabrication variations in SOI microrings for DWDM networks. In Int. Conf. Group IV Photonics Paper P1.19 (IEEE, 2010).
Webster, M. et al. An efficient MOS-capacitor based silicon modulator and CMOS drivers for optical transmitters. In Int. Conf. Group IV Photonics Paper WB1 (IEEE, 2014).
Junichi, F. et al. High-performance MOS-capacitor-type Si optical modulator and surface-illumination-type Ge photodetector for optical interconnection. Jpn J. Appl. Phys. 55, 04EC01 (2016).
Avrutin, E. A., Gorfinkel, V. B., Luryi, S. & Shore, K. A. Control of surface emitting laser diodes by modulating the distributed Bragg mirror reflectivity: small signal analysis. Appl. Phys. Lett. 63, 2460–2462 (1993).
Liu, D., Wang, L. & He, J.-J. Rate equation analysis of high speed Q-modulated semiconductor laser. J. Lightw. Technol. 28, 3128–3135 (2010).
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge K. Norris for the help in SEM imaging, S. Srinivasan, M. Piels, J. Doylend, B. Thibeault and C. Zhang for useful discussion in fabrication, and support from the nanofabrication facilities at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
D.L. conceived the idea, and led the simulation, fabrication and manuscript preparation. H.X. contributed to the modelling and fabrication and led the device characterization. G.K. contributed to the fabrication and testing platform set-up. M.F. and R.G.B. participated in the manuscript revision and high-level project supervision.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information
Supplementary information (PDF 320 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Liang, D., Huang, X., Kurczveil, G. et al. Integrated finely tunable microring laser on silicon. Nature Photon 10, 719–722 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.163
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.163
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Roadmap** the next generation of silicon photonics
Nature Communications (2024)
-
Monolithic integration of embedded III-V lasers on SOI
Light: Science & Applications (2023)
-
On the pass- and stop-band optical filtering by passive silicon photonic circuits using square-layout MZI ring(s)
Optical and Quantum Electronics (2023)
-
Defect free strain relaxation of microcrystals on mesoporous patterned silicon
Nature Communications (2022)
-
Uprooting defects to enable high-performance III–V optoelectronic devices on silicon
Nature Communications (2019)