The field of silicon photonics has experienced widespread adoption in the datacoms industry over the past decade, with a plethora of other applications emerging more recently such as light detection and ranging (LIDAR), sensing, quantum photonics, programmable photonics and artificial intelligence. As a result of this, many commercial complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) foundries have developed open access silicon photonics process lines, enabling the mass production of silicon photonics systems. On the other side of the spectrum, several research labs, typically within universities, have opened up their facilities for small scale prototyping, commonly exploiting e-beam lithography for wafer patterning. Within this ecosystem, there remains a challenge for early stage researchers to progress their novel and innovate designs from the research lab to the commercial foundries because of the lack of compatibility of the processing technologies (e-beam lithography is not an industry tool). The CORNERSTONE rapid-prototyping capability bridges this gap between research and industry by providing a rapid prototyping fabrication line based on deep-UV lithography to enable seamless scaling up of production volumes, whilst also retaining the ability for device level innovation, crucial for researchers, by offering flexibility in its process flows. This review article presents a summary of the current CORNERSTONE capabilities and an outlook for the future.

A distributed feedback GaAs-based semiconductor laser with a laterally coupled grating is demonstrated at a wavelength of 780.24 nm with up to 60 mW power. A mode expander and aluminum-free active layers have been used to reduce the linewidth to 612 kHz while maintaining high output power. The laser demonstrates over 40 dB side-mode suppression ratio with >0.3 nm of tuning suitable for atom cooling experiments with the D2 87 Rb atomic transition. This laser has substantial potential to be integrated into miniaturized cold atom systems.Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

There is a great desire to extend ultrasonic techniques to the imaging and characterization of nanoobjects. This can be achieved by picosecond ultrasonics, where by using ultrafast lasers it is possible to generate and detect acoustic waves with frequencies up to terahertz and wavelengths down to nanometers. In our work we present a picosecond ultrasonics setup based on miniaturized mode-locked semiconductor lasers, whose performance allows us to obtain the necessary power, pulse duration and repetition rate. Using such a laser, we measure the ultrasonic echo signal with picosecond resolution in a Al film deposited on a semiconductor substrate. We show that the obtained signal is as good as the signal obtained with a standard bulky mode-locked Ti-Sa laser. The experiments pave the way for designing integrated portable picosecond ultrasonic setups on the basis of miniaturized semiconductor lasers.

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We present a new electroabsorption modulated laser based on a lumped configuration, identical epitaxial layer scheme, and a new low-permittivity planarization method. The design of the device is intended to offer a high modulation frequency using a simple and cheap fabrication process. A thick-film of HSQ spinon coating was used to planarize the device and enable a low capacitance contact to the p-side. A 6-µm-thick planarized HSQ layer was fabricated and used to implement the electrode to the electroabsorption modulator.