Room-temperature InAs/InP Quantum Dots laser operation based on heterogeneous "2.5 D" Photonic Crystal

The authors report on the design, fabrication and operation of heterogeneous and compact "2.5 D" Photonic Crystal microlaser with a single plane of InAs quantum dots as gain medium. The high quality factor photonic structures are tailored for vertical emission. The devices consist of a top two-dimensional InP Photonic Crystal Slab, a SiO(2) bonding layer, and a bottom high index contrast Si/SiO(2) Bragg mirror deposited on a Si wafer. Despite the fact that no more than about 5% of the quantum dots distribution effectively contribute to the modal gain, room-temperature lasing operation, around 1.5 microm, was achieved by photopumping. A low effective threshold, on the order of 350 microW, and a spontaneous emission factor, over 0.13, could be deduced from experiments.