Mid-infrared (MIR) silicon photonic systems show great promise for miniaturizing a variety of sensing and detection technologies. Rapid progress has been made in recent years, and numerous passive and active MIR devices have now been constructed on various silicon-based platforms. We previously reported the heterogeneous integration on silicon of Fabry–Perot and distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) operating at 4.8 μm. Interband cascade lasers (ICLs) will be preferred for many on-chip sensing technologies because they operate in the 3–6 μm range with threshold drive powers 1–2 orders of magnitude lower than QCLs. In this work, we demonstrate the integration of ICLs on a silicon substrate. These lasers emit 3.6 μm light into silicon-on-insulator waveguides in pulsed mode at temperatures up to 50°C. This represents an important step toward MIR photonic integrated circuits on silicon that operate with much lower drive power and therefore an even smaller footprint.

中文翻译：

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硅带间级联激光器

中红外（MIR）硅光子系统显示出将各种传感和检测技术小型化的巨大希望。近年来已经取得了长足的进步，并且现在已经在各种基于硅的平台上构建了许多无源和有源MIR器件。我们之前曾报道过Fabry-Perot硅片上的异质集成以及工作在4.8μm的分布式反馈量子级联激光器（QCL）。带内级联激光器（ICL）在许多片上传感技术中将是首选，因为它们工作在3–6μm范围内，阈值驱动功率比QCL低1-2个数量级。在这项工作中，我们演示了ICL在硅基板上的集成。这些激光器在高达50°C的温度下以脉冲模式将3.6μm的光发射到绝缘体上硅波导中。