Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique

France Telecom Etablissement Autonome De Droit Public

French State Represented by the Minister of Post, Telecommunications and

Erwan Bigan

Paul Voisin

Michel Allovon

Jean-Christophe Harmand

An integrated monolithic electrooptical component having an electrooptical modulator and a semiconductor laser on the same substrate. The modulator and laser are formed from a stack of semiconductor layers. The modulator includes one layer that is absorbent and the laser includes one layer that is active. Both absorbent and active layers are constituted by the same epitaxied structure of a highly coupled composition superlattice with alternation of semiconductor layers of different compositions. A forward voltage is applied to the laser layers that causes the active layer of the laser to emit a radiation which then traverses the absorbent layer of the modulator. A reverse voltage is applied to the modulator layers in order to modulate the absorption of the radiation traversing the modulator.

Highly coupled superlattice integrated laser-modulator component

An Electro-Optic modulation method and device using a low-energy oblique transition of a tightly coupled super-grid. According to the present invention, a luminous beam is injected into a tightly coupled super-grid and an electric field (E) is applied to the super-grid whose amplitude is made to gradually vary so as to cause the intensity of the beam to vary. This beam is injected parallel to the plane of the films of the super-grid which guides the injected beam. The electric field is weak and applied along the growth direction of the super-grid, which provokes the appearance of a low energy oblique transition (TB) in a domain of wavelengths where the super-grid is transparent in the absence of any electric field. The super-grid is one whereby the wavelength of the luminous beam is contained in this domain. Such a device may find application in optical telecommunications systems.

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Paris, France

Erwan Bigan