On-chip plasmonic nanolasers for ultrafast optical interconnects

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17H03229
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Electronic materials/Electric materials
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: DELAUNAY Jean-Jacques 東京大学, 大学院工学系研究科(工学部), 准教授 (80376516)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 松井 裕章 東京大学, 大学院工学系研究科(工学部), 准教授 (80397752)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: プラズモニクス / 光デバイス / ナノ材料

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Due to the demand for photonic computing, on-chip optical communication, and biosensing at the nanoscale, interest in nanolasers has grown. Plasmonic lasers are promising as nanoscale laser sources and have been studied using semiconductor nanowires synthesized by bottom-up techniques and transferred on metal surfaces. The transfer and positioning steps hamper the development of on-chip devices.
We demonstrate a monolithically fabricated plasmonic nanolaser compatible with the fabrication requirements of on-chip circuits. The nanolaser is designed with the plasmonic metal layer on top of the gain medium making top-down nanofabrication of nanolasers and high-quality metal-gain material interfaces possible. This design supports a lasing mode with a large effective area and confines the absorption of the pump light to the area in which the plasmonic-waveguide mode is most intense, thus reducing the lasing threshold. Plasmonic lasing is demonstrated in the ultraviolet region up to 330 K.

Free Research Field

ナノオプティクス

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

We propose a nanolaser plasmonic structure with very efficient light confinement at subwavelength dimensions. This nanosize light source circuit can be fabricated on a chip by top-down techniques and therefore offers a means to integrate optical nano-circuits on a large scale.