III-V Lasers and Integrated Components Directly Grown on Silicon: Options for Integration

摘要

III-V semiconductor RF and optoelectronic devices have been widely used for decades, primarily in discrete form or low level integration. The conventional wisdom has been that lattice-matched crystal structures must be grown on native substrates with minimal crystalline defects to ensure good device performance and reliability. With limited availability of last-area / low-cost substrates and manufacturing infrastructure, large scale integration of III-V devices, circuits, and system is still in its infancy, compared with Si CMOS. To meet the urgent need for energy-efficient high-performance computing and data-communication components for big data traffic systems, increased adoption and integration of optics and electronics using the fast maturing silicon photonics is essential. Design and implementation of compound semiconductor components on a silicon material platform for photonic and electronic integration is the most logical path forward. This III-V on silicon platform strongly leverages the enormous capabilities and infrastructure of Si CMOS, extending them to photonic and electronic integrated devices/circuits for high speed, wide bandwidth, and energy-efficient applications. Most communication wavelength lasers with excellent device performance being used in Si photonics are grown on III-V substrates and bonded to silicon. For monolithic integration, growth and fabrication of such lasers on III-V/ Si compliant substrates is another option. However, this approach is challenging and was deemed intractable for decades. In this talk, I will briefly describe the development of GaAs/Si and InP/Si compliant substrates on (001) CMOS standard Si substrates for laser growth [1]. $1.3 mumathrm{m}$ and $1.5mu mathrm{m}$ electrically-pump quantum dot lasers have been realized on both types of III-V/Si templates. High-performance and reliable InAs/InGaAs quantum dots (QD) lasers emitting at $1.3 mu mathrm{m}$ grown by MBE on GaAs/Si templates has been well-developed over the past few years [2]. Recently, InAs/InAlGaAs QD lasers on InP/Si templates emitting at either $1.3 mu mathrm{m}$ or $1.5mu mathrm{m}$ have also been demonstrated by MOCVD [3], moving one step closer to make truly monolithic Si photonics a reality.