As one of two mainstream platforms, photonics integrated circuits (PICs) on Si photonics platform benefits from the mature complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) manufacturing capabilities and allows for the processing of Si-based PICs with ultra-high volume and low cost. Recent studies of SiGeSn materials, which yield true direct bandgap with sufficient Sn incorporation, hold great promise for PICs featuring scalable, cost-effective, and power-efficient. While the exciting developments in bulk devices including lasers, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and photodetector were reported, the quantum wells (QWs) structure and devices have been investigated targeting the dramatically improved and/or novel device performance via variety of quantum confinement effects. In this work, we report the recent progress on SiGeSn QW development. Particularly, the study of MQW laser is presented. Devices with higher optical confinement factors exhibit clear lasing confirmed by the threshold characteristic and the emission spectra below and above threshold. Only spontaneous emission was observed with the thinner cap layer samples. On the other hand, samples with thicker cap layers of 250 and 290 nm exhibit clear lasing at 77 K with thresholds of 214 and 664 kW/cm2, respectively. These promising results establish the guidance for the device design and pave the way for the SiGeSn QW devices towards future high-performance PICs on Si platform.
Group IV-based optoelectronic devices have been intensively pursued to enable full monolithic Si photonics integration. Such devices have great potential for future needs of compact, low cost, and high -performance. Since group IV semiconductors are inhibited from efficient light emitters due to their indirect bandgap nature, a novel group IV material system, GeSn alloy, has attracted renewed interest. GeSn alloy yields true direct bandgap with Sn incorporation over 8%, and it can be monolithically grown on Si making it desirable for developing a Si-based light source with fully complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility. Over the past few years, considerable progress has been reported on the development of optically pumped GeSn lasers based on direct bandgap GeSn alloys, f ollowed by the recent demonstration of electrically injected GeSn lasers. In this work, we report the development of electrically injected GeSn laser diodes utilizing GeSn/SiGeSn heterostructures grown on Si substrate, with detailed attention given to the cap layer to reduce the optical loss. The material was fabricated into ridge waveguide laser devices and lasing performance was investigated under pulsed conditions. The collected electroluminescence signa l shows clea r la sing signature, and the L−I characteristics of devices with different cavity lengths were studied at various temperatures. The results provide a route for the improvement of high-performance electrically injected GeSn laser diodes.
Liquid droplets offer a great number of opportunities in biochemical and physical research studies in which droplet-based microlasers have come into play over the past decade. While the recent emergence of droplet lasers has demonstrated their powerful capabilities in amplifying subtle molecular changes inside the cavity, the optical interactions between droplet resonators and an interface remain unclear. We revealed the underlying mechanism of droplet lasers when interacting with a droplet–solid interface and explored its correlation with intermolecular forces. A vertically oriented oscillation mode—arc-like mode—was discovered, where the number of lasing modes and their Q-factors increase with the strength of interfacial hydrophobicity. Both experimental and theoretical results demonstrated that hydrophobicity characterized by contact angle and interfacial tension plays a significant role in the geometry of droplet cavity and laser mode characteristics. Finally, we demonstrated how tiny forces induced by proteins and peptides could strongly modulate the lasing output in droplet resonators. Our findings illustrate the potential of exploiting optical resonators to amplify intermolecular force changes, providing comprehensive insights into lasing actions modulated by interfaces and applications in biophysics.
Group-IV GeSn material systems have recently considered as a new material for sensitive photodetection in the short-wave infrared (SWIR) region. The introduction of Sn into Ge can effectively narrow the bandgap energies, thereby extending the absorption edges toward the longer wavelengths and enabling effective photodetection in SWIR region. Here we present an experimental and modeling study of GeSn/Ge quantum well (QW) photodetectors on silicon substrates for effective SRIW photodetection. Epitaxial growth of pseudomorphic GeSn/Ge QW structures was realized on Ge-buffered silicon substrates using low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy. Normal incident GeSn/Ge QW photodetectors were then fabricated and characterized. The optical responsivity experiments demonstrate that the photodetection cutoff wavelengths is extended to beyond 1800 nm, enabling effective photodetection in SWIR spectral region. We then develop theoretical models to calculate the composition-dependent strained electron band structures, oscillation strengths, and optical absorption spectra for the pseudomorphic GeSn/Ge QW structures. The results show that Ge1-xSnx well sandwiched by Ge barriers can achieve a critical type-I alignment at Γ point to provide necessary quantum confinement of carriers. With an increase in the Sn content, the band offsets between the GeSn well and Ge barreirs increases, thus enhancing the oscillation strengths of direct interband transitions. In addition, despite stronger quantum confinement with increasing Sn content, the absorption edge can be effectively shifted to longer wavelengths due to the direct bandgap reduction caused by Sn-alloying. These results suggest that GeSn/Ge QW photodetectors are promising for low-cost, high-performance SWIR photodetection applications.
An efficient Si-based laser is one of the most important components for photonic integrated circuits to break the bottleneck of data transport over optical networks. The main challenge is to create gain media based on group-IV semiconductors. Here we present an investigation of using low-dimensional Ge1-xSnx/Ge quantum-well (QW) structures pseudomorphically grown on Ge-buffered Si substrates as optical gain media for efficient Si-based lasers. Epitaxial growth of Ge1-xSnx/Ge QW structures on Ge-buffer Si substrate was carried out using low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy techniques. The light emission properties of the grown Ge1-xSnx/Ge QW structure were studied using photoluminescence spectroscopy, and clear redshifts of emission peaks were observed. Theoretical analysis of band structures indicates that Ge1-xSnx well sandwiched by Ge barriers can form type-I alignment at Г point with a sufficient potential barrier height to confine carriers in the Ge1-xSnx well, thereby enhancing efficient electron-hole direct recombination. Our calculations also show that the energy difference between the lowest Г-conduction subband and L conduction subband can be reduced with increasing Sn content, thereby enabling optical gain. These results suggest that Ge1-xSnx/Ge QW structures are promising for optical gain media to develop efficient Si-based light emitters.
We report the fabrication and characterization of GeSn waveguide structures on Si substrates grown by molecular
beam epitaxy for efficient light-detection and emission. For photodetectors, GeSn waveguide structures exhibit a higher
optical response compared to a reference Ge device as revealed by the photocurrent experiments. For light-emission,
room-temperature photoluminescence experiments show a redshifted emission wavelength for the GeSn samples
compared to the Ge reference sample due to the Sn incorporation. Besides, we observe ripple characteristics in the
amplified spontaneous emission spectrum of the GeSn waveguide structure, which are attributed to the waveguide
modes. Those results suggest that GeSn waveguide structures are promising for high-performance Si-based lightdetectors
and emitters integrable with Si electronics.
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