Laterally Coupled DBR Laser Emitting at
Laterally Coupled DBR Laser Emitting at
Laterally Coupled DBR Laser Emitting at
Abstract—By using focused ion beam lithography high per- evaluating 145 devices, a single-mode yield of 98% with a SMSR
formance 1.55- m emitting distributed Bragg reflector lasers of 35 dB could be achieved without any mirror coatings.
were realized suitable for high-speed optical telecommunication.
Threshold currents of 8 mA and continuous-wave efficiencies
of 0.37 W/A for 600- m-long devices were achieved. Stable II. DESIGN AND FABRICATION
single-mode emission with sidemode suppression ratios of 40 dB
were observed for the entire operation range. By relative intensity As basic material, we used a four quantum-well (QW)
noise measurements an intrinsic 3-dB modulation frequency of InGaAsP–InP laser structure which was grown by gas-source
10 GHz was estimated for a single-mode output power of 23 mW. molecular beam epitaxy. The active region consists of four
Index Terms—Distributed Bragg reflector lasers, ion beam 6-nm-thick compressively strained InGaAsP QWs which are
lithography, monolithic integration, optical communication, WDM separated by 10-nm-thick barriers. The laser structure contains
source. two etch stop layers which define specific etch depths for two
different process steps. These two layers are 140 and 60 nm
I. INTRODUCTION above the active region. The first layer defines the ridge wave-
guide (RWG) depth and the second one the grating depth. The
Manuscript received September 24, 2001; revised March 26, 2002. This work
was supported in part by the European IST Project “Big Band” (IST-2001- III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
34813) and by the State of Bavaria.
L. Bach, S. Rennon, J. P. Reithmaier, and A. Forchel are with the Technische The high potential of this DBR design for different ap-
Physik, Universität Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany. plications is reflected on the light output characteristic
J. L. Gentner and L. Goldstein are with the Alcatel Corporate Research of the LC-DBR laser which is presented in Fig. 2. This
+
Center, OPTO , Groupement d’Intérêt Économique, F-91460 Marcoussis,
figure shows the light output and SMSR characteristic of a
France.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1041-1135(02)05290-4. 300- 300- m-long LC-DBR laser with a grating period
1041-1135/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE
1038 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO. 7, JULY 2002
IV. CONCLUSION
We have designed and fabricated laterally coupled DBR-
lasers with low threshold currents and high single-mode output
powers by using FIB technology. SMSRs up to 48 dB were
achieved with a grating length of 300 m. From RIN measure-
ments, a 3-dB bandwidth of 10 GHz was evaluated. Due to
the weak coupling principle of the grating a high single-mode
yield was obtained with 98% single-mode devices with a SMSR
35 dB, which makes this new type of devices very suitable
for large scale monolithic integration of single-mode emitting
Fig. 4. Resonance frequency f as function of the square root of the output lasers.
power P extracted from RIN measurements. The solid line represents a linear
fit of the data points with the indicated slope coefficient.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank A. Wolf for technical as-
period of 255 nm from 56 to 24 mA could be measured. The sistance during device processing, and I. Montrosset and M.
dependence of the threshold current on the grating period has Gioannini from Politecnico di Torino for the their support in the
its reason in the strong detuning of the emission wavelength to- determination of the coupling coefficients of the DBR lasers.
ward longer wavelengths relative to the maximum of the gain
function. The plotted data are evaluated from devices without REFERENCES
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