Title: A Continuous-Wave On-Demand Si-Integrable Gain-Printed Nanolaser
Abstract: A rapidly increasing demand for fast-bandwidth, low-power consumption and more compact miniaturization has unprecedentedly challenged the conventional limits of Si-based optical integration in terms of its size, density, and complexity, and thus required key optical components to be as small as the operational wavelength or sometimes smaller than the physical limit of optics. However, despite the substantial progress being made in Si-based light modulation and detection and their large-scale, cost-effective, monolithic device integration technology, the realization of small, efficient, and reliable high-quality light sources, for example, continuous-wave (CW) III-V semiconductor nanolasers on Si at room temperature has remained a formidable challenge. In a fundamental level, key requirements for lasing in a carrier-diffusive and light-absorptive semiconductor body of nanocavity unavoidably invites the issues of an excessive increase in threshold and further a suppression of lasing operation, while the absence of an efficient thermal drain keeps the operational stability of device insecure. In a technological point of view, an effort to find a breakthrough approach of Si integration that meets the high criteria - ready and wide applicability, individual and on-demand addressability, high-precision with nanoscale alignment accuracy - has not been rewarded yet. Here, we report on a new concept of on-demand minimal-gain-printed Si nanolaser. A smartly designed minimal III-V semiconductor optical gain structure in conjunction with an individually addressable and highly precise on-demand gain-printing technique addresses both fundamental and technological issues, demonstrating a superior spectral stability in the pulsed conditions and thus even allowing a stable CW operation with a low-threshold of ~50 µW. A simple demonstration of the laser-on-waveguide represents a full-fledged merit of the on-demand gain-printing and the integrated Si nanolaser and thus exhibits its potential of wide and ubiquitous adoption in Si photonics and photonic integrated circuit (PIC) communities.
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