News Article
Pulsed hybrid laser looks good for fiber-optics
Building on their previous development of a hybrid InP/silicon laser structure, researchers from Intel and the University of California, Santa Barbara, demonstrate a similar device with pulse characteristics suitable for ultrafast optical communications.
The hybrid silicon laser revealed last year by a team out of Intel and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), is now suitable for applications in high-speed optical communications.
Led by USCB s John Bowers, the collaboration has fabricated mode-locked devices, in other words lasers that produce ultrashort pulses at a very high repetition rate.
The advance means that lasers based on a silicon manufacturing platform, similar to that used in volume CMOS processing, are one step closer to becoming a commercial reality - and that the Intel/UCSB hybrid approach is the most promising.
