Ultracompact and Unidirectional On-Chip Light Source Based on Epsilon-Near-Zero Materials in an Optical Communication Range

An on-chip light source is one of the essential components for integrated photonic circuits and quantum-information processing chips. To date, it has been a great challenge to construct an on-chip light source with high directionality, high collection efficiency, and ultrasmall feature size simultaneously in the optical communication range. Here, an on-chip light source, consisting of a circular paraboloid etched in an aluminum-doped zinc-oxide film, which is an epsilon-near-zero material, is experimentally realized at 1550 nm. Photons emitted from the a PbS quantum-dot cluster placed near the focal point of this paraboloid are reflected into a directional parallel beam due to the large impedance mismatch between aluminum-doped zinc oxide and ambient medium. An ultrasmall emission divergence angle of only ±3â, and an ultrahigh directional emission contrast ratio of 44 dB are achieved from the ultracompact device with a feature size of only 1.5μm. Also, an ultrahigh collection efficiency of up to 92% is predicted by simulation. This work not only opens an alternative way for the realization of integrated photonic devices based on epsilon-near-zero materials, but also provides another method for the precise assembling of composite functional nanostructures.