On-chip optical communications have experienced great progress lately, gaining in maturity with fast, reliable and efficient optical interconnects. Silicon photonics has demonstrated huge potential to become the dominant technology to support this development. Still, the silicon photonics lacks of a monolithic light source. To overcome this blocking point, hybrid integration of III-V materials on silicon raises as a viable route in the short term.
In this work, we will revisit the hybrid III-V on Si platform and put forward our particular vision at the III-V lab, discussing several points that will play a key role in the coming years.
Photonics is progressively transforming from a highly- focused technology applicable to digital communication networks into a pervasive “enabling” technology with diverse non-telecom applications. However, the centre of mass on the R&D level is still mostly driven by, and invested in, by stakeholders active in the telecoms domain. This is due to the high level of investments necessary that in turn require a large and established market for reaching break-even and generation of revenues. Photonics technology and more specifically, fibre-optic technology is moving into non-telecom business areas with great success in terms of markets captured and penetration rates. One example that cannot be overlooked is the application of fibre-optics to industrial applications, where double-digit growth rates are recorded with fibre lasers and amplifiers constantly gaining momentum. In this example, several years of R&D efforts in creating high-power amplification solutions and fibre-laser sources by the telecom sector, were piggy-backed into industrial applications and laser cutting/welding equipment that is now a strong R&D sector on its own and commercially now displacing some conventional free space laser cutting/welding.
While InGaAs absorption material has been used for various applications up to 1.6μm wavelength, specific designs for
low level detection have become of main interest using high responsivity and low dark current detectors. By adding an
avalanche multiplication layer to form an avalanche photodiode (APD) using the Separated Absorption and
Multiplication (SAM) structure, one can take advantage of the very low noise properties of multiplication process in
large bandgap Al(Ga)(In)As material to improve receiver sensitivity by >10dB. Under high power level injection,
specific PIN structures have been developed to improve space charge effects as needed for power applications such as
microwave analog photonic links. Specific designs to achieve simultaneously broad bandwidth, high responsivity, very
high power saturation and high linearity will be discussed.
Since 2002, the THALES Group has been manufacturing sensitive arrays using QWIP technology based on
GaAs and related III-V compounds, at the Alcatel-Thales-III-V Lab (formerly part of THALES Research and
Technology Laboratory).
In the past researchers claimed many advantages of QWIPs. Uniformity was one of these and has been the key
parameter for the production to start. Another widely claimed advantage for QWIPs was the so-called band-gap
engineering and versatility of the III-V processing allowing the custom design of quantum structures to fulfil the
requirements of specific applications such as very long wavelength (VLWIR) or multispectral detection. In this
presentation, we give the status of our LWIR QWIP production line, and also the current status of QWIPs for MWIR
(<5μm) and VLWIR (>15μm) arrays.
As the QWIP technology cannot cover the full electromagnetic spectrum, we develop other semiconductor
compounds for SWIR and UV applications. We present here the status of our first FPA realization in UV with GaN
alloy, and at 1.5μm with InGaAs photodiodes.
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