Demonstration of room-temperature continuous-wave operation of InGaAs/AlGaAs quantum well lasers directly grown on on-axis silicon (001)

TL;DR

This paper reports the successful demonstration of room-temperature continuous-wave operation of InGaAs/AlGaAs quantum well lasers directly grown on silicon (001), advancing silicon-based optoelectronic integration.

Contribution

It presents the first demonstration of continuous-wave quantum well lasers on silicon with specific growth and fabrication techniques.

Findings

Lasing wavelength around 980 nm

Threshold current of 186.4 mA

Output power of 22.5 mW at 400 mA

Abstract

Room-temperature continuous-wave operation of InGaAs/AlGaAs quantum well lasers directly grown on on-axis silicon (001) has been demonstrated. A 420 nm thick GaAs epilayer completely free of antiphase domains was initially grown on the silicon substrate in a metal-organic chemical vapor deposition system and the other epilayers including four sets of five-period strained-layer superlattices and the laser-structural layers were successively grown in a molecular beam epitaxy system. The lasers were prepared as broad-stripe Fabry-Perot ones with a stripe width of 21.5 um and a cavity length of 1 mm. Typically, the threshold current and the corresponding threshold current density are 186.4 mA and 867 A/cm2, respectively. The lasing wavelength is around 980 nm and the slope efficiency is 0.097 W/A with a single-facet output power of 22.5 mW at an injection current of 400 mA. This advancement makes the silicon-based monolithic optoelectronic integration relevant to quantum well lasers more promising with an enhanced feasibility.