Electrically injected GeSn lasers with peak wavelength up to 2.7 mu m

GeSn lasers enable the monolithic integration of lasers on the Si platform using all-group-IV direct-bandgap material. The GeSn laser study recently moved from optical pumping into electrical injection. In this work, we present explorative investigations of GeSn heterostructure laser diodes with various layer thicknesses and material compositions. Cap layer material was studied by using Si0.03Ge0.89Sn0.08 and Ge0.95Sn0.05, and cap layer total thickness was also compared. The 190 nm SiGeSn-cap device had threshold of 0.6 kA/cm(2) at 10 K and a maximum operating temperature (T-max) of 100 K, compared to 1.4 kA/cm(2) and 50 K from 150 nm SiGeSn-cap device, respectively. Furthermore, the 220 nm GeSn-cap device had 10 K threshold at 2.4 kA/cm(2) and T-max at 90 K, i.e., higher threshold and lower maximal operation temperature compared to the SiGeSn cap layer, indicating that enhanced electron confinement using SiGeSn can reduce the threshold considerably. The study of the active region material showed that device gain region using Ge0.87Sn0.13 had a higher threshold and lower T-max, compared to Ge0.89Sn0.11. The performance was affected by the metal absorption, free carrier absorption, and possibly defect density level. The maximum peak wavelength was measured as 2682 nm at 90 K by using Ge0.87Sn0.13 in gain regions. The investigations provide directions to the future GeSn laser diode designs toward the full integration of group-IV photonics on a Si platform. (C) 2021 Chinese Laser Press