Reliability of III-V/Si heterogeneously integrated lasers

Intel’s integrated InP-based hybrid laser technology is emerging as a promising option for co-packaged optics due to its inherent elimination of several failure modes of conventional discrete distributed feedback lasers, namely, (1) lack of catastrophic optical mirror damage due to no exposed III-V facets, (2) reduced epitaxial interface defects due to no III-V re-growth steps, and (3) no electrostatic discharge failures during handling and assembly. For elimination of other failure modes due to crystalline defects such as dark line dislocations and catastrophic optical bulk damage, the approach of testing every laser using a wafer-scale, high-volume manufacturing burn-in test system to screen out early life failures prior to field deployment has been proven effective. Specifically, the reliability of Intel’s lasers is demonstrated with 45,000 hours of high temperature operating life testing on 32 units with negligible observed degradation. A failure rate in time of <0.1 FIT is demonstrated with accelerated life testing of over 55 thousand lasers and validated as 0.05 FIT by analyzing field deployment data collected from more than 6 million hybrid lasers with 100% Failure Analysis (FA) confirmation over a period of 3 years.