Photonic integrated technology for multi-wavelength laser emission

Science Bulletin, Oct 2011

We summarized the design, fabrication challenges and important technologies for multi-wavelength laser transmitting photonic integration. Technologies discussed include multi-wavelength laser arrays, monolithic integration and modularizing coupling and packaging. Fabrication technique requirements have significantly declined with the rise of reconstruction-equivalent-chirp and second nanoimprint mask technologies. The monolithic integration problem between active and passive waveguides can be overcome with Butt-joint and InP array waveguide grating technologies. The dynamic characteristics of multi-factors will be simultaneously measured with multi-port analyzing modules. The performance of photonic integration chips is significantly improved with the autoecious factors compensation packaging technique.

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Photonic integrated technology for multi-wavelength laser emission

CHEN XiangFei 2 LIU Wen 1 AN JunMing 0 LIU Yu 0 XU Kun 3 WANG Xin 0 LIU JianGuo 0 JI YueFeng 3 ZHU NingHua ) 0 0 Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100083, China 1 State Key Laboratory of Optical Communication Technologies and Networks, Wuhan Research Institute of Posts & Telecommunications , Wuhan 430074, China 2 National Laboratory of Microstructures, Nanjing University , Nanjing 210093, China 3 Institute of Optical Communication and Optoelectronics, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications , Beijing 100876, China We summarized the design, fabrication challenges and important technologies for multi-wavelength laser transmitting photonic integration. Technologies discussed include multi-wavelength laser arrays, monolithic integration and modularizing coupling and packaging. Fabrication technique requirements have significantly declined with the rise of reconstruction-equivalent-chirp and second nanoimprint mask technologies. The monolithic integration problem between active and passive waveguides can be overcome with Butt-joint and InP array waveguide grating technologies. The dynamic characteristics of multi-factors will be simultaneously measured with multi-port analyzing modules. The performance of photonic integration chips is significantly improved with the autoecious factors compensation packaging technique. - Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are important for realizing large-capacity and low-energy consumption future optical networks. In PICs, parallel photonic integrated chips with multi-wavelength laser emission will become important for high-speed data transmission, and with largescale photonic integration, will undertake similar tasks to integrated circuits. Thus, PIC has received much recent research attention. Since 2004, the United States, Europe and Japan have launched large-scale research projects involving photonic integration, including the IRIS and LASOR projects in the United States, the EuroPIC, PLATON and HELIOS projects in Europe and the PiFAS project in Ireland. The world pioneer in PIC technology is the Infinera Corporation from the United States. They have developed PIC-based wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission equipment, which is now commercially available. The Infinera PIC chip is realized through the integration of more than 50 discrete functions in a single monolithic chip. The structure of a PIC with multi-wavelength laser transmitter is shown in Figure 1. The chip is constructed of a multi-wavelength laser array, modulator array, light detector array for monitoring optical power, semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) array for power balancing and WDM combiner (usually an array waveguide grating (AWG)). Although the technology for discrete components is largely mature in commercial applications, it still remains a significant challenge to integrate these different functional optoelectronic devices into a single chip. There are many scientific and technical challenges, including the preparation compatibility issues for different functional micro-nano structures, the multi-wavelength laser emission that meets the requirement of ITU-T specifications, the laser mode stability, and laser mode crosstalk problems caused by the The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Figure 1 Integrated chip for multi-wavelength laser transmitter. interaction of microwaves and light waves inside the chip. Light detector array, SOA array and WDM combination in PICs is well advanced and will not be further discussed here. However, there is a big difference between multiwavelength laser arrays and single-channel lasers, and many important issues need to solve. For example, to achieve accurate 100 GHz wavelength spacing, a grating period spacing of 0.12 nm is necessary. Traditional holographic exposure to fabricate gratings cannot meet these demanding requirements to achieve the precise control of the lasing wavelength. Point-by-point writing techniques using highprecision electron beam (E-beam) lithography can achieve a precision of 0.1 nm. However, this technology has a long writing time, high cost, low yield and poor reproducibility. E-beam lithography is a useful laboratory tool but unsuitable for large-scale commercial applications [1]. The Infinera Corporation uses selective area growth (SAG) method to control the structural parameters of the active layer of each laser, including thickness and material components. Fine wavelength alignment in the multi-wavelength laser array can be realized through micro-heating resistors to adjust the temperature of individual lasers [2]. However, this method is costly and unable to meet the requirements of low-cost and large-scale production. To solve these important technology issues for chips with multi-wavelength laser emission, innovative design is necessary. Based on the epitaxial growth of different band structures, low-cost large-scale PIC product (...truncated)


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XiangFei Chen, Wen Liu, JunMing An, Yu Liu, Kun Xu, Xin Wang, JianGuo Liu, YueFeng Ji, NingHua Zhu. Photonic integrated technology for multi-wavelength laser emission, Science Bulletin, 2011, pp. 3064, Volume 56, Issue 28-29, DOI: 10.1007/s11434-011-4677-7