This paper describes the use of direct wafer bonding technique to implement the novel concept of "free-material and free-orientation integration" which we propose. The technique is applied for various wafer combinations of an In-Ga-As-P material system with lattice- and orientation-mismatches. The properties of the bonded structures are studied in terms of the crystalline and electrical characterization. The high crystalline quality of the bonded structures with those mismatches is proved by transmission electron microscopy, and good electrical conduction was attained in some bonded structures of InP and GaAs. (001) InP-based 1.55-µm wavelength lasers are fabricated on (110) GaAs substrate by direct wafer bonding. The light-current characteristics of the lasers are almost identical to those of lasers fabricated on (001) InP and (001) GaAs substrates, while the turn-on voltage is a little bit higher due to the higher barrier height at the bonded interface. The practicability in those lasers are also examined. Furthermore, we show direct wafer bonding of a (001) InP-based structure and a (110) Si substrate with a GaAs buffer layer, aligning the cleavage planes of the InP and the Si. The results demonstrate the remarkable feasibility of using the direct wafer bonding technique to obtain integrated structures of material- and orientation-mismatched wafers with satisfactory quality.

This paper describes 40-Gbit/s operation of 1.55-µm electro-absorption (EA) modulators applicable to compact and low-cost transmitters for very-short-reach (VSR) applications. We start by identifying factors that make a multi-quantum-well (MQW) design suitable for high levels of output power and for uncooled operation. From the basic experimental results, we determine that a valence-band discontinuity ΔEv at around 80 meV is optimal in terms of combining high-output-power operation and a good extinction ratio. We then apply the above findings in an InGaAsP-MQW EA modulator that is monolithically integrated with a distributed feedback (DFB) laser, and thus obtain operation with high output power (+1.2 dBm), a high ER (10.5 dB), and a low power penalty (0.4 dB after transmission over 2.6 km of single-mode-fiber). These results confirm the applicability of our EA modulator/DFB laser to VSR applications. After that, we theoretically demonstrate the superiority in terms of ER characteristics of the InGaAlAs-MQW over the conventional InGaAsP-MQW. InGaAlAs-MQW EA modulators are fabricated and demonstrate, for the first time, 40-Gbit/s operation over a wide temperature range (0 to 85).