Ring lasers and photodetectors on the hybrid III–V-on-Si platform

Silicon photonics, the art of achieving photonic functions on the Si-based platform, have been regarded as the most feasible solution for the growing request on data transmission, particularly in data center and high-performance computing applications. Higher bandwidth, lower cross talk, lower latency and lower power consumption are major advantages over the conventional metal interconnects. Consisting of a III-V epi bonded onto the Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, the III-V-on-Si platform has gained a lot of interest due to its practical solution to combine the desirable electrical and passive optical properties of Si and active optical properties of III-V. It is also compatible with Si metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structure, which makes it promising for mass production. In this talk, we will review our recent work on the two critical components for an efficient hybrid transceiver, i.e., ring lasers with unprecedentedly low tuning power, and photodetectors with high speed, high responsivity, and low leakage current optimized at the same time.