External cavity lasers composed of higher order gratings and SLDs integrated on PLC platform

Very compact 4-channel 200-GHz-spacing external cavity lasers (ECLs) were fabricated by hybrid integration of reflection gratings and superluminescent laser diodes on a planar lightwave circuit chip. The fifth-order gratings as reflection gratings were formed using a conventional contact-mask photo-lithography process to achieve low-cost fabrication. The lasing wavelength of the fabricated ECLs matched the ITU grid with an accuracy of ±0.1 nm, and optical powers were more than 0.4 mW at the injection current of 80 mA for all channels. The ECLs showed single mode operations with more than 30 dB side lobe suppression.