A major achievement has been announced in the field of silicon photonics, with Qiang Li receiving the Best Young Professional Paper Award at the IEEE Silicon Photonics Conference 2026.
The award recognises Li’s paper, “Electrically Injected 1.55 µm InAs/InP Quantum Dot Lasers on On‑Axis (001) Silicon Using a Ge‑Based Buffer,” which was selected as an outstanding contribution from the conference programme. The work addresses a key challenge in photonics: integrating efficient light sources directly onto silicon platforms.
Li’s research demonstrates the development of electrically injected quantum dot lasers operating at 1.55 µm, a wavelength critical for optical communications. By using a germanium-based buffer layer on silicon, the approach enables high-quality III–V semiconductor material growth on standard silicon substrates—an important step toward scalable, cost-effective photonic integration.
The achievement highlights significant progress in bridging the gap between compound semiconductor materials and silicon photonics, an area of increasing importance for data communications, sensing, and future computing technologies.
The award is a strong recognition of both the technical innovation and the broader impact of the work, which contributes to advancing next-generation integrated photonic systems.
