Towards Photonic-Plasmonic Integrated Circuits: Study and Fabrication Of Electrically-Pumped Plasmonic Nano-Laser

For the next generation of optical communication, Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC) and optoelectronic integrated circuits has been of great interest because of the possibility of integrating multiple optical components and electronics together to give high performance opto-electronic system on a small chip that can be produced cost-effectively. Integrated semiconductor laser, as the main light source for generating signals in optical communications, is one of the most important function on a photonic integrated circuit. In the recent advancements in nanophotonics, strong confinement of light in strongly-guiding optical waveguide structure comparing to conventional structures, has been used to improve certain performances of on-chip semiconductor lasers and miniaturize the laser device sizes. However, compared to electronics, even with use of nanophotonic device technology, optoelectronic device footprints are still relatively large due to the diffraction limit of light, which poses a limit on the sizes of optoelectronic devices.;Plasmonic photonic device area has been an intensive field of research that utilizes plamonic photonic waveguides to confine light smaller than the diffraction limit through the effect of surface plasmon polariton, a coupling between photons and plasmon along a metal-dielectric interface. In this dissertation, an electrically pumped Plasmonic nanolaser has been designed using 2D-FDTD simulation. The nanolaser has the potential of lasing utilizing achievable optical gain in the typical compound (group III-V) semiconductor materials. The laser electrical pumping structure is compatible with device integration on silicon photonics platform utilizing silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate.;Electrically pumped thin film based laser structure is shown to be realizable with the use of TCO material as transparent electrodes on the waveguide cladding. Indium oxide (In2O3) and Zinc-Indium-Tin-Oxide (ZITO) deposited by ion-beam-assisted deposition (IAD) have been studied for their material physical, optical, and electrical properties, over a wide range of conductivity and transparency at the optical communication wavelength range. In particular, their electrical contact properties to n-type and p-type InP have been examined, and Ohmic contact to n-InP have been achieved. The contact resistance is as low as 10-6Ocm2.;Based on the abovementioned technological developments, electrically-pumped plasmonic semiconductor nanolasers have been designed and fabricated, and their structures have been optimized via minimizing their optical modal losses. The fabrication process has been calibrated and initial device measurement results have been studied. The results show various challenges for the realization of electrically pumped nanoscale Plasmonic laser devices that can be improved in the future, which are discussed in detail.