Scalable Wafer Bonding for Active Photonic Devices on Silicon

In this paper, we demonstrate silicon evanescent lasers using a new architecture as one way to build photonic active devices on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer via low temperature wafer bonding. This approach adopts a wafer bonded structure between a silicon passive waveguide and III-V offset quantum wells. The optical mode is predominantly confined in the silicon waveguide and a small percentage of the mode evanescently coupled into the III-V gain region. With this structure, optical gain can be achieved by electrical injection of the III-V active quantum well region. The symmetry of the III-V region leads to the definition of the optical mode by processing in the silicon region, allowing for bonding to be done without any critical alignment