Volume Fabrication of Quantum Cascade Lasers on 200 mm-CMOS pilot line

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the fabrication and characterization of mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers on a 200 mm CMOS platform, highlighting a cost-effective approach for integrated optical sensors and spectrometers.

Contribution

It introduces a CMOS-compatible fabrication process for DFB-QCLs operating at 7.4 microns with high yield and performance, enabling scalable production.

Findings

Threshold current density of 2.5 kA/cm2

Linewidth of 0.16 cm-1

High fabrication yield

Abstract

The manufacturing cost of quantum cascade lasers is still a major bottleneck for the adoption of this technology for chemical sensing. The integration of Mid-Infrared sources on Si substrate based on CMOS technology paves the way for high-volume low-cost fabrication. Furthermore, the use of Si-based fabrication platform opens the way to the co-integration of QCL Mid-InfraRed sources with SiGe-based waveguides, allowing realization of optical sensors fully integrated on planar substrate. We report here the fabrication and the characterization of DFB-QCL sources using top metal grating approach working at 7.4 microns fully implemented on our 200 mm CMOS pilot line. These QCL featured threshold current density of 2.5 kA/cm2 and a linewidth of 0.16 cm-1 with a high fabrication yield. This approach paves the way toward a Mid-IR spectrometer at the silicon chip level.