An integrated-photonics platform that bonds InGaAs quantum-well gain material at wafer scale onto low-loss tantalum pentoxide (tantala) passive waveguides, producing active components such as semiconductor optical amplifiers and Fabry-Perot and distributed-feedback lasers at the sub-micron 980 nm wavelengths needed by atomic and trapped-ion quantum sensors. The high-yield process integrates over a thousand components per wafer, and on-chip lasers pump optical parametric oscillation in co-fabricated microring resonators to reach even shorter wavelengths.
This paper demonstrates a heterogeneous photonic integrated circuit platform operating at 980 nm, built by wafer-scale bonding of InGaAs quantum-well active regions onto tantalum pentoxide (tantala) …