1.8-μm thulium microlasers integrated on silicon

Abstract

? 2016 SPIE.A key challenge for silicon photonic systems is the development of compact on-chip light sources. Thulium-doped fiber and waveguide lasers have recently generated interest for their highly efficient emission around 1.8 ?m, a wavelength range also of growing interest to silicon-chip based systems. Here, we report on highly compact and low-threshold thulium-doped microcavity lasers integrated with silicon-compatible silicon nitride bus waveguides. The 200-?mdiameter thulium microlasers are enabled by a novel high quality-factor (Q-factor) design, which includes two silicon nitride layers and a silicon dioxide trench filled with thulium-doped aluminum oxide. Similar, passive (undoped) microcavity structures exhibit Q-factors as high as 5.7 ? 105 at 1550 nm. We show lasing around 1.8-1.9 ?m in aluminum oxide microcavities doped with 2.5 ? 1020 cm''3 thulium concentration and under resonant pumping around 1.6 ?m. At optimized microcavity-waveguide gap, we observe laser thresholds as low as 773 ?W and slope efficiencies as high as 23.5%. The entire fabrication process, including back-end deposition of the gain medium, is silicon-compatible and allows for co-integration with other silicon-based photonic devices for applications such as communications and sensing.