Hybrid Silicon Ring Lasers

Hybrid silicon platform provides a solution to integrate active components (lasers, amplifiers, photodetectors, etc.) with passive ones on the same silicon substrate, which can be used for building an optical interconnect system. Owing to the advantages in footprint, power consumption, and high-speed modulation, hybrid silicon microring lasers have been demonstrated as a potential candidate for on-chip silicon light source. In this paper we review the progress to improve the performance of recently demonstrated compact microring lasers with ring diameter of 50 mu m. A simple approach to enhance optical mode and electron-hole recombination, which results in threshold reduction and efficiency improvement is developed. This is done by appropriately undercutting the multiple quantum well (MQW) region to force carriers to flow towards the outer edge of the microring for better gain/optical mode overlap. We observe a reduction of the threshold of over 20% and up to 80% output power enhancement. The model and the experimental results highlight the benefits, as well as the negative effects from excessive undercutting, including lower MQW confinement, higher modal loss and higher thermal impedance. A design rule for MQW undercutting is therefore provided. Application as on-chip optical interconnects is discussed from a system perspective.