Rare-Earth-Ion Doped Amplifiers and Lasers Integrated on Silicon

Silicon-compatible rare-earth-ion doped AI2O3 thin-film technology is optimized with respect to fabrication reliability, optical loss and gain performance. Net gain is demonstrated in the 0.88, 1.0, 1.3 and $1.5\hbox{-}\mu{\rm m}$ wavelength ranges upon doping of the host material with Nd3+, Yb3+ or Er3+. On-chip devices realized and tested are, among others, a high-speed (170-Gbit/s) amplifier for C-band operation, an amplifier for integration into an optical backplane, a highly efficient (67% slope) waveguide laser with on-chip integrated Bragg gratings and a narrow-linewidth (1.7 kHz) distributed feedback laser.