Active microdisk resonant devices and semiconductor optical equalizers as building blocks for future photonic circuitry

In this dissertation we will present novel WDM components based on multi-section semiconductor optical amplifiers and ultra-small microdisk and microring resonant devices.; In the first part of the dissertation, the design and fabrication of multi-section semiconductor optical amplifiers/equalizers with current-adjustable gain spectrum will be discussed. Two-section amplifiers were fabricated using selective area growth techniques to simultaneously define gain regions with different spectral properties with one growth run. Those devices showed a gain of 12dB and an output saturation power of 10dBm. A flat gain spectrum of more than 100nm was obtained by varying the relative magnitude of the drive currents in both sections.; In the second part, the design and fabrication of active semiconductor microdisk switches, filters, modulators and wavelength routers enabled by trimming the transfer characteristics of a resonant cavity are investigated. Microdisk devices are facet-free resonant cavities that can conveniently be coupled to bus waveguides to provide compact, high-spectral resolution filtering and routing capabilities to the DWDM systems. In this project we demonstrated for the first time active, vertically-coupled semiconductor microdisk switches, filters, modulators and wavelength routers amenable to large-scale integration.