Germanium-tin nanolasers for high-density integration and low-power consumption

Abstract

On-chip light sources have long been pursued to realize photonic-integrated circuits (PICs) for various applications such as quantum information processing, optical communications, and biochemical sensing. However, the integration of light sources into a single chip still remains challenging due to the use of III-V materials, which are incompatible with silicon, resulting in the devices built requiring expensive substrates and complex, low-throughput processing techniques.

Recently, GeSn alloys have been regarded as a potential lasing material for a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible light source. Despite their remarkable progress, all GeSn lasers reported to date have large device footprints and active areas, which prevent the realization of densely integrated on-chip lasers operating at low power consumption.

The aim of this thesis will be focused on developing the GeSn lasers with a compact form factor for the realization of energy-efficient light sources densely integrated on PICs.