Title :
A Hybrid AlGaInAs–Silicon Evanescent Amplifier
Author :
Park, Hyundai ; Fang, Alexander W. ; Cohen, Oded ; Jones, Richard ; Paniccia, Mario J. ; Bowers, John E.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., Santa Barbara, CA
Abstract :
We report a hybrid AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent amplifier incorporating a silicon waveguide with a III-V gain medium. The optical mode of the hybrid amplifier is mostly confined to the silicon waveguide and evanescently coupled to the AlGaInAs quantum-well (QW) region where optical gain is provided by electrical current injection. These two different material systems are bonded by low-temperature oxygen plasma assisted wafer bonding at 300 degC. The fabricated device shows 13 dB of maximum chip gain with 11 dBm of output saturation power. Evanescent coupling allows a lower active region confinement factor to provide a higher saturation output power than amplifiers with centered QWs, which is important for applications that require linear amplification
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; gallium compounds; indium compounds; optical waveguides; semiconductor optical amplifiers; wafer bonding; 13 dB; 300 degC; AlGaInAs-Si; AlGaInAs-silicon evanescent amplifier; electrical current injection; evanescent coupling; low-temperature oxygen plasma; silicon waveguide; wafer bonding; III-V semiconductor materials; Optical amplifiers; Optical saturation; Optical surface waves; Optical waveguides; Plasma confinement; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Silicon; Stimulated emission; Wafer bonding; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; silicon-on- insulator (SOI) technology;
Journal_Title :
Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/LPT.2007.891188
