Heteroepitaxial Integration of Mid-Infrared InAsSb Light Emitting Diodes on Silicon

Delli, Evangelia and Hodgson, Peter David and Repiso Menendez, Eva and Craig, Adam Patrick and Hayton, Jonathan and Lu, Qi and Marshall, Andrew Robert Julian and Krier, Anthony and Carrington, Peter James (2019) Heteroepitaxial Integration of Mid-Infrared InAsSb Light Emitting Diodes on Silicon. IEEE Photonics Journal, 11 (3): 2200608. ISSN 1943-0655

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Abstract

Silicon photonics has emerged as the most promising technology for next-generation compact optoelectronic systems, but further development is still required to achieve efficient and reliable on-chip light sources. Direct epitaxial growth of antimonide-based compound semiconductor materials on silicon provides a pathway towards the monolithic integration of new, mid-infrared solid-state light sources and comprehensive photonic circuits on silicon platforms. Such devices have wide-ranging applications in environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics. This paper reports on the realization of a mid-infrared InAsSb light emitting diode directly integrated onto silicon using molecular beam epitaxy. The heteroepitaxial integration of the InAsSb p-i-n device onto silicon was achieved with the use of a novel, antiphase domain-free, GaSb-on-silicon buffer layer. The device exhibited efficient light emission at room temperature, peaking at around 4.5 μm, which corresponds well to the CO2 atmospheric absorption band. An output power of 6 μW and an external quantum efficiency of 0.011% was measured at 300 K. These results demonstrate mid-infrared III-V light emitting diodes can be directly grown on silicon, which is an essential step towards the realization of the next generation, on-chip integrated light sources.