It is the first indium gallium arsenide/indium aluminum gallium arsenide (InGaAs/InAlGaAs) multi-quantum-well (MQW) lasers directly grown on an on-axis V-grooved (001) Si substrate by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Monolithic integration, it is hoped, will reduce the costs arising from additional processing needed for wafer bonding, and also allow the use of larger-diameter substrates for economies of scale.
Lasing near 1.5 μm from lasers that were monolithically grown on silicon was achieved for the first time, with a threshold current density Jth = 3.3 kA/cm2 under a pulsed current injection at room temperature. The results demonstrate the potential of adopting such a large-area InP-on-Si substrate for integrating diverse III-V laser diodes, photodetectors, high-frequency and high-speed transistors.
