GROWING lasers on silicon has eluded scientists for decades and has been referred to as the Holy Grail of photonics [1]. The fundamental issue preventing the integration of III-V based laser diodes on silicon (or other) substrates is the lattice mismatch between the material systems. This mismatch results in dislocations in the grown III-V material which degrades the performance and lifetime of the resulting laser diodes. There is however an exception to this limitation: Nanorods. In this case, dimensions are s (PICs) generally.

The solution is a linear array of quantum-well nanorod based in-plane laser using Bragg spaced nanorods that can be fabricated on a silicon substrate using conventional techniques. The superiority of this approach arises from its use of existing technologies and in obviating the need for hybridization, cleaving or mirror coatings. Enhanced performance arises from the injection locking effect not present in other geometries. Its generic applicability to any III-V material system allows for potentially wide application.

REFERENCES

1. V. Venugopal. (2020). Silicon Lasers: the Final Frontier. https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/julaug-2020/siliconlasers_the-final-frontier?SSO=1.
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5. E. Stark, T. Frost, S. Jahangir, S. Deshpande, and P. Bhattacharya, “A monolithic electrically injected InGaN/GaN disk-in-nanowire (λ=533nm) laser on (001) silicon,” in Proc. IEEE Photon. Conf., San Diego, CA, USA, Oct. 2014, pp. 591–592, doi: 10.1109/IPCON.2014.6995279.