Anomalous threshold reduction from uniaxial strain for a low-threshold Ge laser

Abstract We theoretically investigate the effect of uniaxial strain on a Ge-on-Si laser. We predict a dramatic ~200x threshold reduction upon applying sufficient uniaxial tensile strain to Ge. This anomalous reduction is explained by how the topmost valence bands split and become anisotropic with uniaxial tensile strain. Approximately 3.2% uniaxial strain is required to achieve this anomalous threshold reduction for 1×10 19  cm −3 n-type doping, and a complex interaction between strain and n-type doping is observed. Achieving this critical uniaxial strain level for the anomalous threshold reduction is dramatically more relevant to practical devices than realizing a direct band gap.