Silicon reflectors for external cavity lasers based on ring resonators

We propose and experimentally investigate types of silicon ring reflectors on Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) platform. These reflectors are used for realizing the silicon hybrid external cavity lasers. A suspended edge coupler is used to connect the reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) chip and the reflectors. The properties of the reflectors and the hybrid external cavity lasers with these reflectors are illustrated. The experimental results show that all of those reflectors have a high reflectivity and the highest reflectivity can up to be 95%. The lowest insertion loss can be as low as 0.4 dB. The output power of the hybrid external cavity lasers with these reflectors can reach mW magnitude and the highest output power is 6.1 mW. Over 30 dB side mode suppression ratio is obtained.