Abstract

Scaling down active nanophotonic devices, namely nano-lasers and nano-light-emitting diodes (nanoLEDs), to deep sub-micrometer sizes, is crucial to achieve small footprint (<1 µm²), low energy consumption (<10 fJ/bit), and efficient (>10%) light sources, as needed for future compact photonic integrated circuits for optical communications [1], and biosensing and bioimaging applications [2]. As the surface-to-volume ratio of these nanoscale sources increases substantially, among the numerous challenges, strong non-radiative processes and difficulties in extracting the light have been shown to have a detrimental effect on the external quantum efficiencies of nanoLEDs and nanolasers [3]. Although there has been intense research, particularly in light-enhancement and out-coupling methods, using for example 2D photonic crystals [4], optical nanoantennas [5], or nanowaveguides integrated with grating couplers [3], these approaches are extremely challenging to implement when the size of the light-emitting structures is drastically reduced to the deep-subwavelength (<<λ³) scale.

© 2019 IEEE