Monolithic integration of AlGaInP laser diodes on SiGe/Si substrates by molecular beam epitaxy

Room temperature operation of visible AlGaInP laser diodes epitaxially integrated on Si was demonstrated. Compressively strained laser heterostructures were grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on low dislocation density SiGe/Si substrates, where the threading dislocation density of the top relaxed Ge layers was measured in the range of 2 × 10 ⁶ cm ^-2. A threshold current density of J _th ∼ 1.65 kA/cm ² for the as-cleaved, gain-guided AlGaInP laser grown on SiGe/Si was obtained at the peak emission wavelength of 680 nm under pulsed mode current injection. These results show that not only can high quality AlGaInP materials grown by MBE be achieved on Si via relaxed SiGe interlayers, but the prototype demonstration of laser diode operation on Si illustrates that very defect sensitive optoelectronics in the III-P system can indeed be integrated with Si substrates by heteroepitaxial methods.