An ultra-short InP nanowire laser monolithic integrated on (001) silicon substrate

Silicon photonics holds the promise of converging electronics and photonics. The key component, a low-cost high-performance laser, is still missing however within this platform. Although novel solutions have been proposed to increase the light emission directly from silicon (or Ge), compared with their III-V counterparts, these solutions are still in their infancy. Recently, the epitaxial growth of III-Vs on silicon regained a wide interest. III-V nanowire growth has been widely investigated. However, most of the III-V nanowire lasers on silicon require a complex cleaving and transfer process, which make these devices not suitable for dense integration. In addition, the large cavity dimensions along the nanowire axis (several microns) hinder dense integration. Here, we present the first room-temperature operation of an ultra-short InP nanowire laser that is epitaxially grown on an exactly [001] oriented silicon substrate. The sub-micron sized laser cavity largely enhances the interaction of the lasing mode with the gain medium, and a large spontaneous emission factor has been obtained.