Integrated Si photonics has sparked a significant ramp-up of investment in both academia and industry as a scalable, power-efficient, and eco-friendly solution. At the heart of this platform is the light source, which has been the focus of research extensively. This talk tries to tackle this issue from two perspectives: monolithic integration based on direct epitaxial growth and heterogeneous integration based on wafer bonding. In monolithic integration, significant improvements in III-V/Si epitaxy have pushed quantum dot technology to the frontiers of Si photonics. Meanwhile, a heterogeneous integration platform is showing very promising results, where a synergistic relationship between the III-V and Si gives rise to superior devices exceeding what is achievable with purely III-V devices. We will talk about the current state of application-driven on-chip silicon lasers. We expect to inspire further development in incorporating photonic integrated circuits with on-chip lasers for substantial performance gains, green solutions, and mass production.

Dr. Yating Wan is an Assistant Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Previously, she worked in Prof. John Bower’s group at UCSB from 2017-2022 as a postdoctoral research associate. Her research interests are in Si Photonics with special emphasis on integration of on-chip light sources for data communications, biosensors/bioimaging, energy harvesting, machine vision, and quantum information processing. She received the 2016-17 School of Engineering PhD Research Excellence Award from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2021 CLEO Tingye Li Innovation Prize, 2018 PIERS Young Scientist Award, 2021 OGC Best Young Scientist Award, and was selected as the Finalist of 2022 Rising Stars of Light. She has published more than 60 peer-reviewed research papers, including 36 first-author journal (24)/conference(12) papers and 8 journal covers.