Raja, Arslan S.Liu, JunqiuVolet, NicolasWang, Rui NingHe, JijunLucas, ErwanBouchandand, RomainMorton, PaulBowers, JohnKippenberg, Tobias J.2020-04-102020-04-102020-04-102020-02-0310.1364/OE.28.002714https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/168092WOS:000514570800004Photonic chip-based soliton microcombs have shown rapid progress and have already been used in many system-level applications. There has been substantial progress in realizing soliton microcombs that rely on compact laser sources, culminating in devices that only utilize a semiconductor gain chip or a self-injection-locked laser diode as the pump source. However, generating single solitons with electronically detectable repetition rates from a compact laser module has remained challenging. Here we demonstrate a current-initiated, Si(3)N(4 )chip-based, 99-GHz soliton microcomb driven directly by a compact, semiconductor-based laser. This approach does not require any complex soliton tuning techniques, and single solitons can be accessed by tuning the laser current. Further, we demonstrate a generic, simple, yet reliable, packaging technique to facilitate the fiber-chip interface, which allows building a compact soliton microcomb package that can benefit from the fiber systems operating at high power (> 100 mW). Both techniques can exert immediate impact on chip-based nonlinear photonic applications that require high input power, high output power, and interfacing chip-based devices to mature fiber systems. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing AgreementOpticshigh-powerdiodespectroscopygenerationtext::journal::journal article::research article