Heterogeneously integrated photonic-crystal lasers on silicon for on/off chip optical interconnects

We demonstrate the continuous-wave operation of lambda-scale embedded active-region photonic-crystal (LEAP) lasers at room temperature, which we fabricated on a Si wafer. The on-Si LEAP lasers exhibit a threshold current of 31 μA, which is the lowest reported value for any type of semiconductor laser on Si. This reveals the great potential of LEAP lasers as light sources for on- or off-chip optical interconnects with ultra-low power consumption in future information communication technology devices including CMOS processors.