The monolithic growth of III-V semiconductor lasers on Si remains the 'holy grail' for full-scale deployment of Si photonics with reduced cost and added flexibility. Further, semiconductor lasers with active regions made from quantum dots (QDs) have shown superior device performance over conventional quantum well (QW) counterparts and offer new functionalities. There are other advantages of QDs for monolithic III-V-on-Si integration over QWs, such as QD devices being less sensitive to defects. It is, therefore, not surprising that the past decade has seen rapid progress in research on monolithic III-V QD lasers on Si, with a view to leveraging the benefits of QD gain region technology while benefitting from the economics of scale enabled by monolithic growth. This review has a special focus on O-band III-V QD lasers monolithically grown on Si for Si photonic optical interconnects, including Fabry-Perot lasers, distributed-feedback laser array, and micro-lasers. The successes and challenges for developing monolithic III-V lasers on Si are discussed.attributed to the effective carrier localization in the self-assembled nanostructures and hence reduced probability of interaction with defects [26,27]. It is not surprising that QD lasers grown on Si have won an overwhelming victory over QW lasers grown on Si in many respects and demonstrated device performance and reliability that is comparable to lasers grown on native III-V substrates.The combined strengths of QD active region techniques and monolithic III-V-on-Si integration technology are poised to revolutionize Si photonics. In this review article, we summarise recent achievements for O-band III-V InAs QD lasers epitaxially grown on Si substrates and describes how QD technology has opened up new avenues in monolithic III-V-on-Si integration technology, enabling efficient and reliable Si-based lasers for Si photonics. This review starts with the challenges associated with the monolithic integration of III-Vs on Si substrates in Section 2, followed by discussion of the advantages of QD over QW structures for use in monolithic integration in Section 3. Section 4 focuses on the 1.3 µm InAs QDs lasers monolithically grown on Ge substrates, Ge-on-Si substrates, Si substrates with off-cut and on-axis Si (001) substrates. Section 5 describes monolithic QD distributed feedback laser arrays on Si substrates operating at O band. Before the Conclusion, Section 6 discusses 1.3 µm QD micro-lasers monolithically grown on Si substrates.
Challenges for monolithic integrationThe idea of monolithic integration of III-V materials on Si platform is, of course, not a new topic. First attempts to growth GaAs thin films on Si substrates started in the 1980s [28,29] and continued in the 1990s with InP-based materials on Si, especially at NTT in Japan [30,31]. This approach, despite being investigated for decades, yielded little progress. This is because, unfortunately, monolithic III-V-on-Si integration poses critical issues stemming from the large material dissimilarity between III-V an...