Elevated temperature lasing from injection microdisk lasers on silicon

The combination of high operation temperatures and small diode lasers directly grown on silicon substrates is essential for their application in future photonic integrated circuits. In this letter, results are presented for quantum dot III–V-on-Si microdisk diode lasers tested at elevated temperatures. To the best of our knowledge, we have demonstrated the first uncooled microlasers with diameter of 30 µm capable of operating in the continuous wave regime at 60 °C. In the lasing regime, the emission spectra contain one very intense line with a full-width at half-maximum of 30 pm; the side mode suppression ratio reaches 18 dB. Because of self-heating, the actual temperature of the active region is close to 100 °C. Under pulsed excitation, the maximal lasing temperature is 110 °C

InAs/GaAs Quantum Dot Microlasers Formed on Silicon Using Monolithic and Hybrid Integration Methods

An InAs/InGaAs quantum dot laser with a heterostructure epitaxially grown on a silicon substrate was used to fabricate injection microdisk lasers of different diameters (15–31 µm). A post-growth process includes photolithography and deep dry etching. No surface protection/passivation is applied. The microlasers are capable of operating heatsink-free in a continuous-wave regime at room and elevated temperatures. A record-low threshold current density of 0.36 kA/cm2 was achieved in 31 µm diameter microdisks operating uncooled. In microlasers with a diameter of 15 µm, the minimum threshold current density was found to be 0.68 kA/cm2. Thermal resistance of microdisk lasers monolithically grown on silicon agrees well with that of microdisks on GaAs substrates. The ageing test performed for microdisk lasers on silicon during 1000 h at a constant current revealed that the output power dropped by only ~9%. A preliminary estimate of the lifetime for quantum-dot (QD) microlasers on silicon (defined by a double drop of the power) is 83,000 h. Quantum dot microdisk lasers made of a heterostructure grown on GaAs were transferred onto a silicon wafer using indium bonding. Microlasers have a joint electrical contact over a residual n+ GaAs substrate, whereas their individual addressing is achieved by placing them down on a p-contact to separate contact pads. These microdisks hybridly integrated to silicon laser at room temperature in a continuous-wave mode. No effect of non-native substrate on device characteristics was found