The ever-growing demand for high-volume fast data transmission and processing is nowadays rapidly attaining the intrinsic limit of microelectronic circuits to offer high modulation bandwidth at reasonable power dissipation. Silicon photonics is set to break the technological deadlock aiming at a functional photonics-on-CMOS integration for innovative optoelectronic systems paving the way towards next-era communication architectures. Among the others photonic building blocks such as photodiodes, optical modulators and couplers, power-efficient compact semiconductors sources in the near-infrared telecommunication bands, characterized by performing modal features as well as thermal resiliency constitute an essential landmark to be achieved. Within such context, InP-based long-wavelength vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) using one-dimensional Si/SiO2 photonic crystals as wideband compact mirrors are proposed as next generation emitters for CMOS integration.
