WIDELY TUNABLE LASER STRUCTURE

摘要

High quality epitaxial layers of compound semiconductor materials (26, 1008) can be grown overlying large silicon wafers (22, 1002) by first growing an accommodating buffer layer (24, 1004) on a silicon wafer. The accommodating buffer layer is a layer of monocrystalline oxide spaced apart from the silicon wafer by an amorphous interface layer (28) of silicon oxide. The amorphous interface layer dissipates strain and permits the growth of a high quality monocrystalline oxide accommodating buffer layer. Any lattice mismatch between the accommodating buffer layer and the underlying silicon substrate is taken care of by the amorphous interface layer. Widely tunable lasers (92) can be created by growing lasers on the high quality compound semiconductor material and using an electro-optical crystalline oxide to tune wavelengths by forming electro-optical wave guide phase matching sections and electro-optical wave guide grating sections which lie adjacent to facets of the lasers which are preferably edge emitting lasers. In addition, widely tunable lasers can also be created by growing lasers on a silicon substrate and forming wave guide phase matching sections (94) and wave guide grating sections (96, 98) from an electro-optical crystalline oxide (24, 1004).