On-chip microlaser and waveguide amplifier on thin-film erbium-doped tantalum pentoxide

On-chip microlasers and waveguide amplifiers offer promising applications in optical communication, sensing, and photonic computing, presenting efficient, compact, and scalable light source solutions for integrated photonics systems. We demonstrated a low-threshold on-chip microdisk resonator laser and a high-gain optical waveguide amplifier on thin-film erbium-doped tantalum pentoxide (Er:Ta₂O₅). The fabricated Er:Ta₂O₅ microdisk microlaser achieved a low threshold of 225 μW, and the fabricated Er:Ta₂O₅ waveguide amplifier achieved an on-chip gain of 8.8 dB/cm. These results demonstrate that active functional high-performance integrated photonic devices can be realized on the thin-film Ta₂O₅ platform.