Directly Pumped Crystalline Silicon Laser - An Impossible Possibility?

Lasing at 1.28 mum was observed in a crystalline silicon structure under direct optical pumping, but is beyond the reach of optical lithography in feature size and beyond that of the e-beam lithography in field size. It is accomplished in this work through the use of a non-lithographic self-organized nanopore array membrane as an etch mask. The anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) nanopore etch mask was placed atop a thin SOI layer which was insulated from the thick silicon substrate by 3 mum of silicon-oxide. The nano patterning was achieved via reactive ion etching (RIE) which introduced nanopores to the silicon. The resultant silicon nanostructure consists of a periodic array of nanoscale high-density emissive structural deformation (ESD) zones