Fully Integrated CMOS-compatible mode-locked lasers

The field of integrated photonics has already revolutionized optical communications and is making rapid advances in signal processing, light detection and ranging, optical sensing, bio-medical diagnostics and imaging, and military-related applications. Large and complex radio-frequency and optical systems could be potentially replaced with compact, power-ecient, alignment-free, cost-effectively mass-produced integrated photonics components. An on-chip high repetition-rate mode-locked laser is a key enabler of many integrated photonics applications, such as all-optical sampling, on-chip frequency combs, low phase noise microwave oscillators, photonic ADCs and others. First-ever fully-integrated on-chip mode-locked lasers are demonstrated in this work, fabricated using a CMOS-compatible process. The lasers have no o-chip elements other than the pump laser, which could be easily co-packaged. 1900nm and 1550nm lasers are designed, fabricated and characterized. For 1900nm central wavelength lasers, several dierent laser configuration are demonstrated, with repetition rates of 690MHz and 1.2GHz. Q-switched, Q-switch-mode-locked, and CW mode-locked laser operation was demonstrated, with the shortest pulse durations of 250fs. The smallest foot-print of one laser is 23.6mm x0.78mmx0.6mm. In addition, first-ever fully-on-chip CMOS-compatible mode-locking element based on Kerr nonlinearity is demonstrated for 1550nm and 1900nm laser wavelengths. Demonstrated modulation depths for 1900nm and 1550nm mode-locking devices are 9% and 2.5% respectively. The work in this thesis presents the first-ever demonstration of fully-onchip CMOS compatible mode-locking device, as well as first-ever CMOS-compatible mode-locked lasers with no o-chip components.

Department dc:contributor.department

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

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Shtyrkova, Katia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Erich P. Ippen.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written 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/1721.1/115641

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/115641