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We review recent advances in the field of quantum dot lasers on silicon. A summary of device performance, reliability, and comparison with similar quantum well lasers grown on silicon will be presented. We consider the possibility of scalable, low size, weight, and power nanolasers grown on silicon enabled by quantum dot active regions for future short-reach silicon photonics interconnects.

At low temperatures, indirect excitons formed at the in-plane electron-hole interface in a coupled-quantum-well structure undergo a spontaneous transition into a spatially modulated state. We report on the control of the instability wavelength, measurement of the dynamics of the exciton emission pattern, and observation of the fluctuation and commensurability effect of the exciton density wave. We found that fluctuations are suppressed when the instability wavelength is commensurate with defect separation along the exciton density wave. The commensurability effect is also found in numerical simulations within the model describing the exciton density wave in terms of an instability due to stimulated processes.

We demonstrate the first electrically pumped continuous-wave (CW) III-V semiconductor lasers epitaxially grown on on-axis (001) silicon substrates without offcut or germanium layers, using InAs/GaAs quantum dots as the active region and an intermediate GaP buffer between the silicon and device layers. Broad-area lasers with uncoated facets achieve room-temperature lasing with threshold current densities around 860  A/cm² and 110 mW of single-facet output power for the same device. Ridge lasers designed for low threshold operations show maximum lasing temperatures up to 90°C and thresholds down to 30 mA.

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Direct integration of high-performance laser diodes on silicon will dramatically transform the world of photonics, expediting the progress toward low-cost and compact photonic integrated circuits (PICs) on the mainstream silicon platform. Here, we report, to the best of our knowledge, the first 1.3 μm room-temperature continuous-wave InAs quantum-dot micro-disk lasers epitaxially grown on industrial-compatible Si (001) substrates without offcut. The lasing threshold is as low as hundreds of microwatts, similar to the thresholds of identical lasers grown on a GaAs substrate. The heteroepitaxial structure employed here does not require the use of an absorptive germanium buffer and/or dislocation filter layers, both of which impede the efficient coupling of light from the laser active regions to silicon waveguides. This allows for full compatibility with the extensive silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. The large-area virtual GaAs (on Si) substrates can be directly adopted in various mature in-plane laser configurations, both optically and electrically. Thus, this demonstration represents a major advancement toward the commercial success of fully integrated silicon photonics.