Nanolasers grown on silicon

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel method for directly growing InGaAs nanopillar lasers on silicon, enabling scalable, high-density on-chip nanophotonic devices that bridge photonics and electronics.

Contribution

A new growth scheme for monolithically integrating nanopillar lasers on silicon, overcoming lattice mismatch and temperature incompatibilities.

Findings

Successful growth of InGaAs nanopillar lasers on silicon.

Use of helically-propagating cavity modes for light confinement.

Potential for high-density, scalable on-chip nanophotonics.

Abstract

Integration of optical interconnects with silicon-based electronics can address the growing limitations facing chip-scale data transport as microprocessors become progressively faster. However, material lattice mismatch and incompatible growth temperatures have fundamentally limited monolithic integration of lasers onto silicon substrates until now. Here, we use a novel growth scheme to overcome this roadblock and directly grow on-chip InGaAs nanopillar lasers, demonstrating the potency of bottom-up nano-optoelectronic integration. Unique helically-propagating cavity modes are employed to strongly confine light within subwavelength nanopillars despite low refractive index contrast between InGaAs and silicon. These modes thereby provide an avenue for engineering on-chip nanophotonic devices such as lasers. Nanopillar lasers are as-grown on silicon, offer tiny footprints and scalability, and are thereby particularly suited to high-density optoelectronics. They may ultimately form the basis of the missing monolithic light sources needed to bridge the existing gap between photonic and electronic circuits.