Integrated thin film InGaAsP laser and 1 x 4 polymer multimode interference splitter on silicon

We report on a thin film InGaAsP laser integrated with a 1 x 4 polymer multimode interference (MMI) splitter on a silicon substrate for planar optical signal distribution. The thin film laser had a threshold current of 40 mA and was endfire coupled to the integrated passive polymer MMI splitter, and the optical signal from the laser was distributed to the four output waveguides of the MMI coupler. The measured loss of the MMI splitter was 0.79 dB. The normalized powers of the four MMI output ports in the integrated system were measured to be 0.823, 0.978, 0.852, and 1.