Infrared and Terahertz lasers on Si using novel group-IV alloys
Our team aims to develop near-IR and THz lasers on Si. These lasers will be based on binary GeSn alloys, ternary GeSiSn alloys, and tensile-strained Ge on GeSiSn.
Why lasers on silicon
This web site, and the millions of websites on the Internet, are made possible by the confluence of two technologies: microelectronics based on silicon (Si) and optical communications based on III-V semiconductor materials. The next revolution in the field of semiconductors is the integration of lasers and microelectronics on a single chip.
Si wafers are much cheaper and much larger than those of any other semiconductor material. Thus the fabrication of lasers on Si would reduce the cost of lasers dramatically. But the implications of lasers on Si are more profound. As microprocessors become faster and faster, communications within a single Si chip will only be possible by optical means. Moreover, enabling silicon technology with optical functionalities would permit the monolithic integration of sensing, spectroscopy, signal processing and computing.
Our vision for lasers on silicon is based on a family of new materials developed at Arizona State University. These materials incorporate the group-IV element tin (Sn). For modest Sn concentrations, binary alloys of germanium (Ge) and Sn are expected to be direct band gap materials suitable for laser fabrication. A direct band gap can also be induced in pure Ge grown under tensile strain on buffer layers made of ternary alloys of Si, Ge, and Sn. Finally, GeSiSn/GeSi multilayers have unique properties that make them attractive for Quantum Cascade Lasers.
The team
Our team brings together experts from Arizona State University (Andrew Chizmeshya, John Kouvetakis, José Menéndez, and Yong-Hang Zhang), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Shun-Lien Chuang), and the University of Massachusetts Boston (Greg Sun).
