Abstract:We demonstrate the first electrically pumped laser in the "InP membrane on Si" platform. With pulsed current injection, the lasing occurs at threshold current of 200mA and peak optical power of 135µW in fiber.OCIS codes: (140.5960) Semiconductor lasers; (250.3140) Integrated optoelectronic circuits IntroductionThe InP membrane on Si (IMOS) platform [1] is a novel candidate for resolving the on-chip data interconnect bottleneck. This platform consists of a thin III-V photonic membrane layer which can be placed on top of electronic chips, thereby allowing the integration of photonic and electronic functionalities. The major advantage of this platform is the ability to integrate active (lasers, photodetectors) and passive (waveguides, filters) components in a single III-V photonic membrane.The key element in this platform is an optical amplifier or a laser with electrical pumping. In our previous report [2], we have presented the design and simulation of a novel design of a twin-guide amplifier structure in IMOS platform. The proposed amplifier structure has the advantages of reduced fabrication complexity and the ability of direct use as high-performance photodetector.In this contribution we demonstrate for the first time lasing in an IMOS laser based on this twin-guide amplifier structure under pulsed current injection. We present the fabrication process of the IMOS lasers and the characterization results on the fabricated lasers.

A new photonic integration technique is presented, based on the use of an indium phosphide membrane on top of a silicon chip. This can provide electronic chips (CMOS) with an added optical layer (IMOS) for resolving the communication bottleneck. A major advantage of InP is the possibility to integrate passive and active components (SOAs, lasers) in a single membrane. In this paper we describe progress achieved in both the passive and active components. For the passive part of the circuit we succeeded to bring the propagation loss of our circuits close to the values obtained with silicon; we achieved propagation loss as low as 3.3 dB/cm through optimization of the lithography and the introduction of C-60 (fullerene) in an electro resist. Further we report the smallest polarisation converter reported for membrane waveguides (< 10 mu m) with low-loss (< 1 dB from 1520-1550 nm), >95% polarisation conversion efficiency over the whole C-band and tolerant fabrication. We also demonstrate an InP-membrane wavelength demultiplexer with a loss of 2.8 dB, a crosstalk level of better than 18 dB and a uniformity over the 8 channels of better than 1.2 dB. For the integration of active components we are testing a twin guide integration scheme. We present our design based on optical and electrical simulations and the fabrication techniques

Waveguides based on line defects in pillar photonic crystals have been fabricated in InP / InGaAsP / InP technology. Transmission measurements of different line defects are reported. The results can be explained by comparison with two-dimensional band diagram simulations. The losses increase substantially at mode crossings and in the slow light regime. The agreement with the band diagrams implies a good control on the dimensions of the fabricated features, which is an important step in the actual application of these devices in photonic integrated circuits.

We show an improved fabrication process of trapezoidal polarization converters for InP-based photonic integrated circuits. The new process has reduced complexity, and the fabricated converters have loss two times lower than reported previously. The measurements of the converters show an efficiency of polarization conversion of 97.9% at a wavelength of 1.535 μm and loss below 0.5 dB.

We report the fabrication and characterization of a new polarization converter for InGaAsP-InP photonic integrated circuits. The converter consists of two right trapezoidal sections with the angled sidewalls etched wetly. The converters show a greatly improved tolerance to variations of the fabrication, an averaged efficiency of polarization conversion of 99.8% and a loss of about 0.7 dB at a wavelength of 1.535 μm.