STTR Phase I: Electrically pumped silicon laser for monolithic integration of electronics and photonics

STTR 第一阶段：用于电子和光子学单片集成的电泵浦硅激光器

• 批准号: 0712214
• 负责人: Lanlan Gu
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Omega Optics, Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-07-01 至 2008-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0712214&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: STTR; Phase; Electrically; pumped; silicon

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I research project aims at developing a practical silicon laser with the ultimate goal of monolithic integration of electronics and photonics on a single silicon substrate. Past approaches to silicon light sources, including Si/Ge superlattices, porous silicon, silicon nanocrystals, a variety of silicon-rich oxide structures, bulk silicon with a textured surface, and various optical pumping schemes have made noteworthy progress through the last few decades. Nonetheless, an electrically pumped silicon laser with satisfactory quantum efficiency has yet to be demonstrated. The proposed program exploits a recent development based on doped silicon nanostructures formed from mixtures of spin-on-dopant and spin-on-glass, which has already achieved an external quantum efficiency of 0.013% and obvious linewidth narrowing above a clear threshold, all at room temperature. The prior development, however, suffered from a poor waveguide structure which collected generated photons inefficiently and lowered effective gain. This project will attempt to solve this problem by investigating the spatial gain profile and designing a waveguide structure tailored to maximize the overlap of the optical mode field of the waveguide and the spatial gain profile. The proposed program aims at enhancing the external quantum efficiency to a few percent, which becomes comparable to compound semiconductor lasers.Having electronics and optics work together on one silicon chip has been the vision of generations of scientists and engineers. Developing an electrically pumped silicon laser is a crucial step toward realizing this vision. Yet the intrinsically weak photon emission capability made the use of silicon problematic. A silicon laser would enable the integration of all optoelectronic components on a single silicon chip. Such chips may find applications in computers, consumer electronics, and medical devices. A special feature of the proposed silicon laser approach is its simple fabrication process, which is readily compatible with modern silicon VLSI technology. This would hasten adoption of the technology into the marketplace.

这个小型企业技术转移（STTR）I阶段研究项目旨在开发一种实用的硅激光器，其最终目标是将电子和光子学在单个硅基板上进行单片整合。过去的硅光源方法，包括Si/GE超晶格，多孔硅，硅纳米晶体，各种富含硅富含硅的氧化物结构，具有纹理表面的散装硅以及各种光学泵送方案，在过去的几十年中都取得了值得注意的进步。但是，具有令人满意的量子效率的电泵送硅激光器尚未证明。提出的计划利用了最新的开发，该开发是基于由旋转型和旋转玻璃的混合物形成的掺杂的硅纳米结构，该结构已经达到了0.013％的外部量子效率，并且在室温下的清晰阈值上方的外部量子效率为0.013％，明显的线宽缩小。然而，先前的发展遭受了不良的波导结构的困扰，该结构收集的光子效率低下并降低了有效增益。该项目将尝试通过研究空间增益曲线和设计量身定制的波导结构来解决此问题，以最大程度地提高波导光学模式和空间增益曲线的重叠。拟议的计划旨在将外部量子效率提高到几个百分比，这与复合半导体激光器相媲美。将电子和光学元件在一个硅芯片上共同起作用，是几代科学家和工程师的愿景。开发电泵送硅激光器是实现这一视力的关键步骤。然而，本质上弱的光子排放能力使使用硅有问题。硅激光器可以在单个硅芯片上整合所有光电组件。此类芯片可能会在计算机，消费电子设备和医疗设备中找到应用。 拟议的硅激光方法的一个特征是其简单的制造过程，它与现代硅VLSI技术很容易兼容。这将加大该技术进入市场。