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An all-silicon Raman laser

Nature volume 433, pages 292–294 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

The possibility of light generation and/or amplification in silicon has attracted a great deal of attention1 for silicon-based optoelectronic applications owing to the potential for forming inexpensive, monolithic integrated optical components. Because of its indirect bandgap, bulk silicon shows very inefficient band-to-band radiative electron–hole recombination. Light emission in silicon has thus focused on the use of silicon engineered materials such as nanocrystals2,3,4,5, Si/SiO2 superlattices6, erbium-doped silicon-rich oxides7,8,9,10, surface-textured bulk silicon11 and Si/SiGe quantum cascade structures12. Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) has recently been demonstrated as a mechanism to generate optical gain in planar silicon waveguide structures13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21. In fact, net optical gain in the range 2–11 dB due to SRS has been reported in centimetre-sized silicon waveguides using pulsed pumping18,19,20,21. Recently, a lasing experiment involving silicon as the gain medium by way of SRS was reported, where the ring laser cavity was formed by an 8-m-long optical fibre22. Here we report the experimental demonstration of Raman lasing in a compact, all-silicon, waveguide cavity on a single silicon chip. This demonstration represents an important step towards producing practical continuous-wave optical amplifiers and lasers that could be integrated with other optoelectronic components onto CMOS-compatible silicon chips.

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Figure 1: Diagrams showing silicon waveguide laser cavity and experimental set-up.
Figure 2: Nonlinear optical transmission of a 4.8-cm-long silicon waveguide containing a p-i-n diode with and without reverse bias.
Figure 3: Average output of the silicon Raman laser with reverse biased p-i-n diode as a function of the average pump power into the silicon waveguide cavity.
Figure 4: Silicon Raman laser spectra.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Alduino, D. Tran, J. Tseng, D. Hodge and J. Johnson for assistance in device fabrication and sample preparation; S. Koehl for software development; M. Morse, H. Liu, M. Salib, D. Samararubio, L. Liao, R. Li and G. Ding for technical discussions; and G. T. Reed, I. P. Kaminow and J. E. Bowers for conversations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intel Corporation, 2200 Mission College Blvd, CHP3-109, Santa Clara, California, 95054, USA

    Haisheng Rong, Ansheng Liu, Richard Jones, Remus Nicolaescu, Alexander Fang & Mario Paniccia

  2. Intel Corporation, S.B.I. Park Har Hotzvim, 91031, Jerusalem, Israel

    Oded Cohen & Dani Hak

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  1. Haisheng Rong
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Correspondence to Haisheng Rong.

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Rong, H., Liu, A., Jones, R. et al. An all-silicon Raman laser. Nature 433, 292–294 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03273

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