Micro-cleaved ridge lasers for optoelectronic integration on silicon

This thesis addresses one of the last hurdles to optoelectronic integration on silicon, namely the incorporation of room-temperature, electrically-pumped edge-emitting laser diodes. To this end, thin (-6 pm) InP-based multiple quantum well (MQW) ridge laser platelets emitting at a wavelength of 1550 nm have been manufactured and integrated by metal-to-metal bonding onto silicon substrates. These laser platelets can be thought of as freestanding optoelectronic building blocks that can be integrated as desired on diverse substrates. These blocks are fully processed lasers, with both top side and bottom side electrical contacts. The thinness of these optoelectronic building blocks and the precision with which their dimensions are defined are conducive to assembling them in dielectric recesses on a substrate, such as silicon, as part of an end-fire coupled, coaxial alignment optoelectronic integration strategy. They are assembled by a micro-scale pick and place technique that allows the blocks to be picked up individually and placed as desired on any substrate. Integration is accomplished by metal-to-metal solder bonding. To enable the manufacture of these laser blocks, a novel micro-cleaving process technology has been developed. This novel micro-cleaving process is used to simultaneously obtain both smooth end laser facets and precisely defined laser cavity lengths. As a proof of concept, this process has been shown to achieve nominal cavity lengths of 300 pm +/- 1.25 pm. It is believed that this micro-cleaving process could be used in the future to make thin platelet lasers having much shorter cavity lengths and with better than 1.25 pm length precision. For the 300 pm long, 6 ,am thin, micro-cleaved ridge platelet lasers integrated onto silicon substrates, continuous-wave lasing at temperatures as high as 55 "C and pulsed lasing at temperatures to at least 80 "C have been achieved.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Rumpler, Joseph John, 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Clifton G. Fonstad, Jr.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44718

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44718