Simulation Study of Fin-Structure Micro-Laser Based on III-Nitride Material
Abstract
Interconnect bottleneck in integrated circuit industry is brought about by complexity of structure, upper boundary of bandwidth, parasitic capacitors of parallel links, and distortion and interference as the distance between copper lines goes smaller and smaller. This problem, potentially, can be solved by photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology, yet optical components are far less matured to reach chip level. We put forward a planar structure PIC which is based on fin-structure technology and focused on the design and simulation study of the laser source: III-Nitride fin-structure micro-laser (FSML).
Compared with conventional semiconductor lasers such as vertical cavity surface emitting diodes (VCSELs) and edge emitting diodes lasers (EELDs) etc., footprints of FSMLs are much smaller, and the threshold current density is promising to be dramatically reduced. Even though III-Nitride optoelectronic devices are suffering from the limitation of substrate options and defect-density, these drawbacks can largely be overcome due to the fin-structure design. In terms of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) applications, the compatibility of FSML is better than traditional light sources (LEDs, VCSELS, EELDs) because of the less coupling loss with waveguide. We started our work with electrical study of fin-LED design, and followed with optical/multi-physics study on DBRs, cavities, and laser-modelling. In Chapter I, we give a brief review of the development of light sources applied in IC industries and compare the performance of different material systems. Chapter II focuses on the design of separate components of FSML (DBRs, LEDs, cavities, waveguides). The laser modelling is a highly complex work, which is described in detail in Chapter III; laser performance and data analysis are also included in this chapter. The last chapter presents a summary of the simulation work, and possible future direction in PhD program. Software skills required in this thesis include COMSOL multi-physics, MATLAB, Autodesk Inventor, and Microsoft Office software.
Citation
Gong, Chen (2018). Simulation Study of Fin-Structure Micro-Laser Based on III-Nitride Material. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /188897.