Ying XUE

　

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Ying XUE received the B.Sc. degree in microelectronics from Shandong University in 2017, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic and computer engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in2022. She is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Here research focuses on the III-V optoelectronic devices on silicon and their integration with Si-photonics. Her research contributions have yielded impressive results, including high-quality III-V on Si/SOI material platform, high-performance III-V lasers and PDs on Si/SOI and efficient coupling between III-V and Si. These achievements have been published in journals such as Light: Science & Applications, Optica, Laser & Photonics Review, Photonics Research, Journal of Lightwave Technology and Optics Express, and highlighted by multiple media including Optics & photonics news, Phys.org, Semiconductor Today, Science Daily, Compound Semiconductor and EurekAlert.

In-plane III-V active devices on silicon-on-insulator for integrated photonics

Silicon photonics (Si-photonics) is the core technology to address the communication bottleneck and enable emerging applications with low-cost, large-bandwidth and high-throughput optical interconnects. While Si-photonics has been successful with Si passive components, monolithic integration of III-V on Si for active devices has remained the major challenge. Traditional blanket epitaxy produces III-V active devices monolithically integrated on Si by growing thick III-V buffer layers on Si to reduce the defects caused by the mismatch between III-V and Si materials. However, the thick buffer limits the device performance and severely impedes efficient coupling between III-V and Si. To solve this dilemma, my research work is dedicated to the development of III-V lasers and photodetectors on Si using a novel selective epitaxy method named lateral aspect ratio trapping (LART). Thanks to the unique defect engineering technique, high-quality III-V on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform with intimate placement of III-V and Si have been achieved. Efficient micro-lasers, low-threshold distributed feedback lasers and high-speed photodetectors over 100 Gb/s have been demonstrated on SOI substrates. Most importantly, by designing a coupling scheme between III-V and Si, in-plane and efficient coupling between III-V active devices and Si passive components has been demonstrated with a high coupling efficiency up to 95%. These results provide a novel solution of on-chip lasers for photonic integrated circuits (PIC) and outlines the prospect of fully integrated Si photonics.