STTR Phase I: Electrically pumped silicon laser for monolithic integration of electronics and photonics

这个小型企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段研究项目旨在开发一种实用的硅激光器，最终目标是在单个硅衬底上实现电子和光子学的单片集成。硅光源的过去方法，包括Si/Ge超晶格、多孔硅、硅纳米晶体、各种富硅氧化物结构、具有纹理表面的体硅以及各种光学泵浦方案，在过去几十年中取得了显著的进展。然而，具有令人满意的量子效率的电泵浦硅激光器还有待证实。该计划利用了最近的发展，基于掺杂硅纳米结构形成的混合物的旋涂掺杂剂和旋涂玻璃，它已经实现了0.013%的外部量子效率和明显的线宽变窄以上明确的阈值，所有在室温下。然而，现有技术的发展受到不良波导结构的影响，该不良波导结构低效地收集所产生的光子并且降低了有效增益。本项目将试图通过研究空间增益分布和设计一种定制的波导结构来解决这个问题，以最大限度地提高波导的光模场和空间增益分布的重叠。该计划旨在将外部量子效率提高到百分之几，这与化合物半导体激光器相当。将电子和光学结合在一个硅芯片上一直是几代科学家和工程师的愿景。开发电泵浦硅激光器是实现这一愿景的关键一步。然而，固有的弱光子发射能力使硅的使用成为问题。硅激光器将使所有光电子元件集成在单个硅芯片上。这种芯片可以在计算机、消费电子产品和医疗设备中找到应用。 所提出的硅激光器方法的一个特点是其简单的制造工艺，这是很容易与现代硅VLSI技术兼容。这将加速该技术进入市场。

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I research project aims at developing a practical silicon laser with the ultimate goal of monolithic integration of electronics and photonics on a single silicon substrate. Past approaches to silicon light sources, including Si/Ge superlattices, porous silicon, silicon nanocrystals, a variety of silicon-rich oxide structures, bulk silicon with a textured surface, and various optical pumping schemes have made noteworthy progress through the last few decades. Nonetheless, an electrically pumped silicon laser with satisfactory quantum efficiency has yet to be demonstrated. The proposed program exploits a recent development based on doped silicon nanostructures formed from mixtures of spin-on-dopant and spin-on-glass, which has already achieved an external quantum efficiency of 0.013% and obvious linewidth narrowing above a clear threshold, all at room temperature. The prior development, however, suffered from a poor waveguide structure which collected generated photons inefficiently and lowered effective gain. This project will attempt to solve this problem by investigating the spatial gain profile and designing a waveguide structure tailored to maximize the overlap of the optical mode field of the waveguide and the spatial gain profile. The proposed program aims at enhancing the external quantum efficiency to a few percent, which becomes comparable to compound semiconductor lasers.Having electronics and optics work together on one silicon chip has been the vision of generations of scientists and engineers. Developing an electrically pumped silicon laser is a crucial step toward realizing this vision. Yet the intrinsically weak photon emission capability made the use of silicon problematic. A silicon laser would enable the integration of all optoelectronic components on a single silicon chip. Such chips may find applications in computers, consumer electronics, and medical devices. A special feature of the proposed silicon laser approach is its simple fabrication process, which is readily compatible with modern silicon VLSI technology. This would hasten adoption of the technology into the marketplace.