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Stress engineering with silicon nitride stressors for Ge-on-Si lasers

University of British Columbia

Silicon compatible lasers are in great need for applications such as on-chip and short-reach optical interconnects. Although InAs/GaAs quantum dot lasers monolithically grown on Si have been realized and are well-performed, due to material contamination issues, it is time and cost intensive for those III-V materials to enter mainstream Si processing facilities. Germanium(Ge)-on-Silicon(Si) laser is promising as a solution to solve the Si-compatible laser problem as it is compatible with Si processing. So far, the main problems in Ge lasers are that they have a high threshold current density and low efficiency. Laser structure designs with top and side silicon nitride stressors were proposed in this work and shown to be effective in reducing the threshold current (Ith) and improving the wall-plug efficiency (ηwp) of Ge-on-Si lasers. Side stressors turned out to be a more efficient way to increase ηwp than using the top and side stressors together. With the side stressors and geometry optimizations, a maximum ηwp of 34.8% and an Ith of 36 mA (Jth of 27 kA/cm²) were achieved with a defect limited carrier lifetime (𝜏𝑝,𝑛) of 1 ns. With 𝜏𝑝,𝑛 being 10 𝑛𝑠 , an Ith of 4 mA (Jth of 3 kA/cm²) and a ηwp of 43.8% were achieved. These are tremendous improvements from cases without any stressors. Compared to other stress introduction methods, such design is much more suitable for Ge laser structure implementation. These results provide a strong support to the Ge-on-Si laser technology and create an effective way to improve the Ge laser performance.

Text

2017-06-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62116

Materials Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/