Semiconductor Nanolasers Based on Integration with Silver

基于银集成的半导体纳米激光器

• 批准号: 1408302
• 负责人: Seth Bank
• 金额: $ 33.12万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1408302&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Semiconductor; Nanolasers; Based; Integration; Silver

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.

标题：过去55年来，基于与银的集成基于与银的集成，目睹了人类计算能力的前所未有的进步，从而实现了以前难以想象的应用。 这是通过电子集成电路的出现来实现的，其中电元素是在单个芯片上一起构建的。 通过大小“缩放”来完成计算能力的增加，即缩小每个计算元件的大小，以适应单个芯片上更多元素，从而在给定时间内执行更复杂的功能。 由于光子集成电路的最近商业化，人类交换信息的能力正在经历类似的范式转移，这是电子集成电路的类似物，该电路对光线上编码信息而不是电力。 然后，携带此信息的光可以使用光纤在很大的距离上传输。 在这些光子集成电路中，产生和过程光的许多组件以与电子集成电路对应物的方式相同的方式集成在一起。但是，组件的基本最小尺寸受光尺度相当大的限制。 结果，由于每个光学组件的大小必然比其电气对应器大得多，因此可以将较少的组件组合在单个芯片上，从而限制了光子积分电路的功能。 在这里，克服这一挑战的方法是利用晶体金属将组件内的光限制在比光波长小得多的尺寸上。 这将使较小的光学组件，因此可以显着强大的光子集成电路。 这里的重点将是构建极小的激光器，这些激光器是在光子集成电路中产生光的组件。 这项工作将为两个博士学位提供尖端的研究机会。学生，增加了从历史上代表性不足的群体中增加本科生的研究机会，并帮助无数的Pre-K-12学生与令人兴奋的纳米科学世界相关。基于当前的预测，在接下来的10年中，将需要次波长光学组件，以继续迈向Moore的基于INP基于INP的光子电路定律。 目前可以应对这一挑战的努力主要集中在与无定形/多晶金属的晶体半导体的异质整合，从而限制了它们的性能和/或用于光子集成电路的前景。 应对这一关键挑战的正交方法是将III-V主动培养基与外延白银进行整体整合，以大大减少困扰金属基纳米光子设备广泛领域的光损失。 外延银生长的最新进展表明，光损失可以大大降低，等离子体传播长度显着增强，从而实现了这种基本限制的解决方案。 尽管这种努力集中在满足对有效的亚波长纳米剂源的需求上，但该方法通常适用于光子整合电路中需要的其他主动和被动设备。 这项多方面的调查将使外在III-V/银色异质结构的生长和装置制造与（1）实现在室温下运行的高性能，发射的纳米剂，并在室温下进行操作，（2）阐明和量化新颖的方法，以使银和III-V的活性结构综合起来，从而使光线相互作用可增强nan sopters nananoscale。