Abstract

A design for a laser is presented here, based on gold-coated on-chip etched facets and multimode interference (MMI) couplers [1]. The laser (shown in Fig. 1) was fabricated from commercially obtained regrowth-free 1550nm laser material and using exclusively standard UV lithography. The fabrication process is a two etch-depth process compatible with most standardised shared foundry processes [2]. The single-mode operation was achieved by the crossing of a central waveguide with the loop. The index perturbation caused by the crossing results in a reflection, making the device a multi-cavity laser and enabling single mode operation. Gold-coated etched facets are used as an on-chip reflective solution to remove the need for any cleaved facet from the design.

© 2017 IEEE