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

这个小型企业技术转移(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。过去对硅光源的方法，包括硅/锗超晶格、多孔硅、硅纳米晶、各种富硅氧化物结构、具有织构表面的体硅以及各种光泵浦方案，在过去的几十年里取得了显著的进展。然而，一种具有令人满意的量子效率的电泵浦硅激光器尚未被证明。该方案利用了一种基于掺杂硅纳米结构的最新进展，这种纳米结构由自旋掺杂和自旋玻璃混合而成，已经在室温下实现了0.013%的外量子效率和明显的线宽收窄，超过了一个清晰的阈值。然而，之前的发展受到了糟糕的波导结构的影响，这种结构收集产生的光子效率低下，降低了有效增益。这个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，该结构最大限度地增加了波导的光学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几个百分点，可以与化合物半导体激光器相媲美。在一块硅芯片上实现电子和光学的协同工作一直是几代科学家和工程师的愿景。开发一种电泵浦硅激光器是实现这一愿景的关键一步。然而，本质上微弱的光子发射能力使硅的使用成为问题。硅激光器可以将所有的光电子元件集成到一个硅芯片上。这样的芯片可能会在计算机、消费电子产品和医疗设备中得到应用。所提出的硅激光器方法的一个特点是其制造工艺简单，很容易与现代硅VLSI技术兼容。这将加速这项技术进入市场。

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.