Silicon-based laser, amplifier, and wavelength converter for optoelectronic integration

With a reverse biased p-i-n structure embedded in a silicon waveguide, we efficiently reduced the nonlinear loss due to two photon absorption induced free carrier absorption and achieved continuous-wave net Raman amplification and lasing in a silicon waveguide on a single chip. The low-loss p-i-n waveguides also enabled efficient wavelength conversion in the 1550 nm band via four-wave mixing in silicon. Here we report the performance characteristics of the silicon based laser, amplifier as well as wavelength converter for different device configurations. With a pump wavelength at 1550 nm, the laser output at 1686 nm is single mode with over 55 dB side mode suppression and has less than 80 MHz linewidth. At 25V reverse bias, the threshold pump power is ~180 mW. The slope efficiency is ~4.3% for a single side output and a total output power of >10 mW can be reached at a pump power of 500 mW. The laser wavelength can be tuned by adjusting the wavelength of the pump laser. A 3 dB on-chip amplification and -8.5 dB wavelength conversion efficiency is achieved in an 8-cm long waveguide at a pump powers of < 640 mW. We demonstrate that a high-speed pseudo-random bit sequence optical data at 10 Gb/s rate can be amplified or converted to a new wavelength channel with clear open eye diagram and no waveform distortion.