Semiconductor Nanolasers Based on Integration with Silver

标题：基于与Silver集成的半导体纳米激光器在过去的55年里，见证了人类计算能力的前所未有的进步，使以前无法想象的应用成为可能。这是随着电子集成电路的出现而实现的，在电子集成电路中，电子元件被一起构建在一个芯片上。计算能力的提高是通过大小“缩放”实现的，即缩小每个计算元素的大小，以在单个芯片上容纳更多元素，从而在给定的时间内执行更复杂的功能。人类交换信息的能力正在经历类似的范式转变，这是因为最近光子集成电路的商业化，光子集成电路是电子集成电路的模拟，它编码的是光而不是电的信息。然后，携带这种信息的光可以使用光纤传输到很远的距离。在这些光子集成电路中，许多产生和处理光的组件以与它们的电子集成电路对应组件大致相同的方式集成在一起；然而，组件的基本最小尺寸受到相当大的光长度尺度的限制。因此，可以在单个芯片上组合的组件要少得多，因为每个光学组件的尺寸必须比它们的电子对应件大得多，从而限制了光子集成电路的能力。这里克服这一挑战的方法是使用晶体金属将组件中的光限制在比光波长小得多的维度。这将使光学元件变得更小，从而使光子集成电路的功率大大提高。这里的重点将是制造极小的激光器，这是在光子集成电路中产生光的部件。这项工作将为两名博士生提供前沿研究机会，增加来自历史上代表性不足群体的本科生的研究机会，并帮助无数K-12预科学生接触令人兴奋的纳米科学世界。根据目前的预测，亚波长光学元件将在未来~10年内需要继续摩尔定律的InP基光子电路的进步。目前可以应对这一挑战的努力主要集中在晶体半导体与非晶/多晶金属的异质集成上，限制了它们的性能和/或在光子集成电路中的应用前景。解决这一关键挑战的一个正交方法是使用III-V有源介质与外延银的单片集成，以极大地减少困扰基于金属的纳米光子器件广泛领域的光学损失。外延银生长的最新进展表明，光损耗可以大大减少，等离子体传播长度显著增加，从而能够解决这一根本限制。虽然这项工作集中于解决对高效亚波长纳米激光光源的需求，但该方法广泛适用于光子集成电路中所需的其他有源和无源器件。这项多方面的研究将结合外延III-V/银异质结构的生长和器件制造，以(1)实现在室温下工作的高性能电注入纳米激光器，以及(2)阐明和量化集成银和III-V有源结构的新方法，这些方法显著增强了纳米级的光-物质相互作用。

Title: Semiconductor Nanolasers Based on Integration with Silver The past 55 years has witnessed unprecedented progress in humanity's ability to compute, enabling applications that were previously unimaginable. This has been achieved with the advent of the electronic integrated circuit, where electrical elements are built together on a single chip. Increasing computing power is accomplished through size "scaling", namely shrinking the size of each computing element to accommodate more elements on a single chip, enabling more complex functions to be performed in a given time. Humanity's ability to exchange information is undergoing a similar paradigm shift, due to the recent commercialization of the photonic integrated circuit, an analog of the electronic integrated circuit that encodes information on light, rather than electricity. The light carrying this information can then be transmitted over great distances using fiber optics. In these photonic integrated circuits, numerous components that produce and process light are integrated together in much the same way as their electronic integrated circuit counterparts; however, the fundamental minimum size of components is limited by the rather large length scale of light. As a result, many fewer components may be combined on a single chip because the size of each optical component is necessarily much larger than their electrical counterparts, limiting the capabilities of photonic integrated circuits. The approach here to surmount this challenge is to employ crystalline metals to confine light within components to much smaller dimensions than the wavelength of light. This would enable much smaller optical components and, hence, significantly more powerful photonic integrated circuits. The focus here will be on building extremely small lasers, which are the components that generate light in photonic integrated circuits. This work will provide cutting-edge research opportunities for two Ph.D. students, increase research opportunities for undergraduates from historically underrepresented groups, and help engage countless pre-K-12 students with the exciting world of nanoscience.Based upon current projections, subwavelength optical components will be required in the next ~10 years to continue the Moore's Law of InP-based photonic circuits progress. Current efforts that could address this challenge are focused mainly on heterogeneous integration of crystalline semiconductors with amorphous/polycrystalline metals, limiting their performance and/or the prospects for application to photonic integrated circuits. An orthogonal approach to this critical challenge is to employ monolithic integration of III-V active media with epitaxial silver to greatly reduce the optical losses that plague the broad field of metal-based nanophotonic devices. Recent progress in the growth of epitaxial silver has revealed that optical losses can be greatly reduced and plasmon propagation lengths significantly enhanced, enabling a solution to this fundamental limitation. While this effort concentrates on addressing the need for efficient subwavelength nanolaser sources, the approach is broadly applicable to the other active and passive devices required in photonic integrated circuits. This multifaceted investigation will couple the growth and device fabrication of epitaxial III-V/silver heterostructures to (1) realize high-performance, electrically-injected nanolasers that operate at room temperature and (2) illuminate and quantify novel methods to integrate silver and III-V active structures that dramatically enhance light-matter interactions at the nanoscale.