6. Lasers for integrated photonic circuits

The growing need to increase component functionality, combined with the maturity of III-V semiconductor technology, is driving the rapid development of Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs). This involves integrating several elements on the same semiconductor substrate to perform complex functions. The main advantages of PICs are

• a significant reduction in the cost of module assembly, which represents around 90% of the cost of components. In fact, since the various elements making up a PIC are integrated, it is no longer necessary to put each element into a module;

• reduced size thanks to a single module;

• reduced power consumption, as temperature stabilization can be shared by multiple components.

Two integration techniques have been developed...