Lasing in strained germanium microbridges

Germanium has long been regarded as a promising laser material for silicon based opto-electronics. It is CMOS-compatible and has a favourable band structure, which can be tuned by strain or alloying with Sn to become direct, as it was found to be required for interband semiconductor lasers. Here, we report lasing in the mid-infrared region (from λ = 3.20 μm up to λ = 3.66 μm) in tensile strained Ge microbridges uniaxially loaded above 5.4% up to 5.9% upon optical pumping, with a differential quantum efficiency close to 100% with a lower bound of 50% and a maximal operating temperature of 100 K. We also demonstrate the effect of a non-equilibrium electron distribution in k -space which reveals the importance of directness for lasing. With these achievements the strained Ge approach is shown to compare well to GeSn, in particular in terms of efficiency. Germanium (based) lasers are a promising route towards a fully CMOS-compatible light source, key to the further development of silicon photonics. Here, the authors realize lasing from strained germanium microbridges up to 100 K, finding a quantum efficiency close to 100%.