GeSn alloys hold the promise for the development of on-chip, scalable, industry-compatible light sources. Here, we introduce a novel strain engineering approach to create tensile-strained GeSn microlasers. Through a unique lithographic design, the initially harmful compressive strain intrinsic to the GeSn layers is converted to the beneficial tensile strain and amplified on the GeSn microbridges. By tuning the design parameters of the microbridges, multiple lasers with different tensile strains were achieved on a single chip. We anticipate that increasing the tensile strain will lead to a shift in the lasing wavelength and an improvement in the laser threshold. This work presents a straightforward and cost-effective solution for developing diverse on-chip laser arrays, enabling applications such as on-chip wavelength division multiplexing.
Combining Sn alloying and tensile strain to Ge has emerged as the most promising engineering approach to create an efficient Si-compatible lasing medium. The residual compressive strain in GeSn has thus far made the simple geometrical strain amplification technique unsuitable for achieving tensile strained GeSn. Herein, by utilizing two unique techniques, we report the introduction of a uniaxial tensile strain directly into GeSn micro/nanostructures. By converting GeSn from indirect to direct bandgap material via tensile strain, we achieve a 10-fold increase in the light emission intensity.
In the quest for practical group IV lasers, researchers have proposed a few ideas such as strain engineering of Ge and alloying of Sn into Ge. Both approaches fundamentally alter bandstructure such that Ge can become a direct bandgap material. Recently, relaxation of limiting compressive strain and addition of mechanical tensile strain have been employed to improve the lasing performance. However, such strain engineering has thus far been possible only in suspended device configurations, which significantly limit heat dissipation and hinder the device performance. We herein demonstrate GeSn microdisk lasers fully released on Si that relax the limiting compressive strain and achieve excellent thermal conduction.
GeSn alloys have emerged as a promising material for realizing CMOS-compatible light sources. GeSn lasers demonstrated to date have large device footprints and active areas, which limit the realization of densely integrated lasers operating at low power consumption. Thanks to their intrinsically small device form factors, 1D photonic crystal lasers may offer opportunities to overcome such limitations of large GeSn lasers. Here, we present a 1D photonic crystal nanobeam laser with a very small device footprint (~7 μm2) and a compact active area (~1.2 μm2) on a GeSn-on-insulator substrate.
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