Oxide-free bonding of a III-V active stack emitting at 1300-1600 nm to a silicon-on-insulator wafer offers the capability to electrically inject lasers from the silicon side. However, a typical 500-nm-thick silicon layer notably attracts the fundamental guided mode of the silicon + III-V stack, a detrimental feature compared to established III-V Separate-Confinement Heterostructure (SCH) stacks. We experimentally probe with photoluminescence as an internal light source the guiding behavior for oxide-free bonding to a nanopatterned silicon wafer that acts as a low-index barrier. We use a sub-wavelength square array of small holes as an effective " low-index silicon " medium. It is weakly modulated along one dimension (superperiodic array) to outcouple the resulting guided modes to free space, where we use an angle-resolved spectroscopy study. Analysis of experimental branches confirms the capability to operate with a fundamental mode well localized in the III-V heterostructures. " III-V/silicon photonics for on-chip and inter-chip optical interconnects, " Laser Photonics Rev. 4(6), 751–779 (2010). 2. J. K. Doylend and A. P. Knights, " The evolution of silicon photonics as an enabling technology for optical interconnection,