Low-temperature (10-300 K) characterization of MOVPE-grownvertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Experimental results from the low-temperature characterization of AlGaAs-based, MOVPE-grown VCSEL's are reported. Evaluations focus on 830-nm (300 K) wavelength devices, showing continuous lasing over the entire 300-10 K measurement range with threshold currents from 3.6 mA (300 K) to 10.7 mA (10 K), and an ≈0.6 Å/°C wavelength shift. Gain-resonance alignment for 830-nm devices occurred between 200-225 K with 1.6 mA minimum threshold current at 1.6 V. 817-nm VCSEL's with 4.5 mA threshold at 300 K achieved submilliamp (0.8 mA) minimum threshold current near 125 K, representing a record low threshold current density of 250 A/cm²     

2.05-μm wavelength InGaAs-InGaAs distributed-feedbackmultiquantum-well lasers with 10-mW output power

Single-mode operation beyond 2.05-μm wavelength has been achieved in InGaAs-InGaAs distributed-feedback (DFB) laser with four quantum wells. The continuous-wave output power is 10.5 mW at a drive current of 200 mA and 25°C, The tuning range of the wavelength is between 2.051-2.056 μm with a temperature tuning rate of +0.125 nm/°C     

Low-threshold, high-temperature operation of 1.2 μm InGaAsvertical cavity lasers

The growth and characterisation of high performance InGaAs/GaAs quantum-well vertical cavity lasers with an emission wavelength of 1215 nm is reported. Continuous wave operation is demonstrated up to 105°C with a threshold current below 1 mA for T<80°C. For a 2.5 μm device the room temperature threshold current, output power and slope efficiency is 0.6 mA, 0.6 mW and 0.2 W/A, respectively     

Wavelength-independent operation of EA-modulator integratedwavelengthselectable microarray light sources

In this letter, we have simultaneously fabricated five wavelength-selectable microarray light sources (WSLs), each having a different wavelength range integrated with an electroabsorption (EA) modulator on a single wafer. We also introduced a novel device configuration scheme for wavelength-independent modulation. The five EA-WSLs fully covered the entire C-band and had a low uniform threshold current of 6 ± 1 mA at 25°C. Wavelength-independent extinction characteristics were obtained over a tuning wavelength range of 8 nm, and 2.5-Gb/s transmission over 600 km was successfully achieved     

Low temperature continuous operation of vertical-cavitysurface-emitting lasers with wavelength below 700 nm

Low-temperature continuous operation of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with wavelength below 700 nm is discussed. For heat sink temperatures below -25°C, threshold currents less than 4 mA and optical power of several milliwatts are obtained. The possibility of achieving efficient room temperature continuous operation is discussed     

Tensile strained QW structure for low-threshold operation of short-wavelength, AlGaInP LDs emitting in the 630 nm band

The amount of tensile strain introduced into QWs and the optimum QW structure are evaluated for low-threshold operation of AlGaInP LDs in the wavelength range 630-640 nm. Very low threshold current of 32 mA under CW operation at 20 degrees C is achieved in an index-guided SQW LD emitting at 632 nm.<>     

1.3-μm GaInAsP/InP transverse-mode stabilized buried-crescentlasers by a new fabrication technique using a reactive ion beam etching

Transverse-mode-stabilized, 1.3-μm, GaInAsP/InP, buried-crescent (BC) lasers fabricated using a reactive ion beam etching (RIBE) technique are presented. Yields of single-transverse-mode operation as high as 95% are achieved with low threshold currents of 11-25 mA. Transverse-mode stability under both high-power and long-term operation (50°C, 20 mW, 1000 h) is demonstrated. A coupling efficiency into a single-mode fiber of 63% and a coupled power of 40 mW at 160 mA are achieved. Stable continuous-wave operation is also confirmed under a constant power of 5 mW (50 and 70°C) and 20 mW (50°C) in an aging test     

High-power and low-threshold-current operation of 1.3 μm strain-compensated AlGaInAs/AlGaInAs multiple-quantum-well laser diodes

Low-threshold-current and high-temperature operation of 1.3 μm wavelength AlGaInAs/AlGaInAs strain-compensated multiple-quantum-well laser diodes (LDs) with a linearly graded index separate confinement heterostructure also made up of AlGaInAs has been successfully fabricated. The threshold current density and differential quantum efficiency are 400 A/cm² and 22% for the as-cleaved broad-area LDs with a 900 μm cavity length, respectively. The calculated internal quantum efficiency, internal optical loss, and threshold gain are 23%, 6.5 cm⁻¹, and 45 cm⁻¹, respectively. The threshold current and slope efficiency at room temperature for the 3 μm-ridge-stripe LDs without facet coating are 12 mA and 0.17 W/A, respectively. The peak wavelength is at 1295 nm with an injection current of 60 mA. With increasing the temperature up to 100 °C, the threshold current will increase up to 41 mA. The characteristic temperature is around 78 K in the range from 20 to 60 °C and 56 K in the range from 60 to 100 °C. The wavelength swing varied with temperature is 0.43 nm/°C for the LDs operated at 60 mA and room temperature.     

Low threshold room temperature pulsed and -57°C CW operationsof 1.3 μm GaInAsP/InP circular planar buried heterostructuresurface-emitting lasers

Room temperature pulsed lasing operation of a 1.3-μm GaInAsP/InP vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser has been achieved by using an effective carrier confinement of circular planar buried heterostructure (CPBH) and high reflectivity SiO₂/Si dielectric multilayer mirrors. The threshold current for a device having a nearly 12-μm-diameter active region was 34 mA at 24°C under pulsed operation. The optimized window cap structure reduces the series resistance to 6~15 Ω. Continuous wave lasing was also obtained up to -57°C, and the threshold below -61°C was still lower than 22 mA     

15-GHz modulation bandwidth, ultralow-chirp 1.55-μm directlymodulated hybrid distributed Bragg reflector (HDBR) laser source

A hybrid source has been realized, integrating a fast Fabry-Perot laser and a fiber grating. The device has shown very good performances in the 1530-1570-nm range, obtaining 16 mA of threshold current at 20°C, 1.6-mW fiber optical power and 48 dB of sidemode suppression ratio at 50 mA bias current. The cavity length was designed to achieve a good tradeoff between chirp reduction and increasing speed. The device has shown for the first time, to our knowledge, more than 15 GHz of small-signal modulation bandwidth, and 10-Gb/s modulation capability. Moreover, a penalty-free transmission experiment at 2.5 Gb/s over 100 km of standard fiber has confirmed the very low wavelength chirp of the device. These previous characteristics together with an extremely low temperature dependence (<0.02 nm/°C) make the hybrid distributed Bragg reflector (HDBR) particularly suitable for dense wavelength-division-multiplexing systems     

Room-temperature, continuous-wave operation for mode-stabilisedAlGaInP visible-light semiconductor laser with a multiquantum-wellactive layer

646 nm continuous-wave operation at room temperature (25°C) has been achieved by a transverse mode stabilised AlGaInP laser diode with a (multi-)quantum-well structure. The laser structure was grown by metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy. The threshold current (density) is 55 mA (4.4 kA/cm²) and maximum light output power is 19 mW. Stable fundamental transverse-mode operation was obtained, at least up to 15 mW     

Low-threshold tensile-strained InGaAs-InGaAsP quantum-well laserswith single-step separate-confinement heterostructures

The authors studied tensile-strained InGaAs-InGaAsP quantum-well lasers with single-step separate-confinement heterostructures (SCH). They obtained threshold currents below 2 mA at 20°C and below 10 mA at 100°C with indium mole fractions of 0.3 and 0.35 in the active layers. They found that the poorer carrier confinement of the longer wavelength SCH layer lowered the characteristic temperature at high temperatures. A laser with two In_0.35Ga_0.65As wells and a 1.1-μm composition InGaAsP SCH layer produced a 1.6-mA CW threshold current at 20°C and lasing at 120°C. Using this laser, very short lasing delays under zero-bias current over a wide temperature range and 2 Gb/s modulation under zero-bias current at 70°C were achieved     

Low threshold 650 nm band real refractive index-guided AlGaInPlaser diodes with strain-compensated MQW active layer

650 nm band real refractive index-guided AlGaInP laser diodes with a strain-compensated MQW active layer have been successfully fabricated. A threshold current of 9 mA, which is the lowest ever reported was achieved and 5 mW operation was obtained up to 120°C. These lasers have been operated for >3000 h under 5 mW at 90°C     

Interleaved-contact electroabsorption modulator usingdoping-selective electrodes with 25°C to 95°C operating range

A multiple-quantum-well (MQW) modulator with multiple stacked p-i(MQW)-n-i(MQW)-p-regions is demonstrated. Electrodes are deposited such that all the n-layers are connected to one contact and all the p-layers to the other. This allows high fields to be produced in the i-regions with relatively low voltages, since the i-regions may be made thin while retaining large optical interaction because they are stacked. A large usable wavelength range which translates into a large operating temperature range is obtained because of large Stark shifts in the MQWs at high fields. For a 0 to 6 V swing >22% reflectivity change from 25°C to 95°C, or alternatively over a wavelength range of 15 nm at 25°C, is achieved     

High-temperature, low threshold current, and uniform operation1×12 monolithic AlGaInAs/InP strain-compensated multiple quantumwell laser array in 1.5 μm

In this paper, we describe the fabrication of a monolithically integrated 1×12 array of 1.5-μm AlGaInAs/InP strain-compensated multiple-quantum-well (MQW) lasers, which has high reliability and highly uniform characteristics in low threshold current, slope efficiency, and lasing wavelength. Besides, each diode on the array exhibits a high characteristic temperature of 88 K and a low slope-efficiency drop of less than 1 dB between 20-80°C and a lasing wavelength of 1510 nm at 20°C and 20 mA. Also, the diode on the array has a maximum resonance frequency of above 8 GHz or 3-dB modulation bandwidth of 12 GHz     

Highly uniform operation of high-performance 1.3-μm AlGaInAs-InPmonolithic laser arrays

We describe the fabrication of monolithically integrated 1×12 arrays of 1.3-μm strain-compensated multiquantum-well AlGaInAs-InP ridge lasers. The laser array shows highly uniform characteristics in threshold current, slope efficiency, and lasing wavelength with a standard deviation of 0.08 and 0.27 mA, 0.012 and 0.007 W/A, and 0.59 and 0.57 nm, respectively, at 20°C and 100°C. Besides, each laser on the array exhibits a low threshold current of 8 mA at 20°C and 21 mA at 100°C, a characteristic temperature of 92 K, and a slope efficiency drop of 0.7 db between 20°C and 80°C. A low thermal crosstalk of less than -4 dB can be obtained from one diode as the injected current of other elements is increased to 70 mA. Also, each laser on the array has a negligible degradation after a 24-hr burn-in test at 80 mA and 100°C. An expected lifetime of more than 20 years is estimated for the lasers when operating at 10 mW and 85°C. The lasers have a small-signal modulation bandwidth of about 9 GHz at 25°C and a low relative intensity noise of -155 dB/Hz without an isolator at 2.5 GHz. It can transmit a 2.5-GHz signal to 50 km through standard single-mode fiber and to 308 m through multimode fiber, with a clear eye opening in OC-48 data-rate tests     

Low dispersion penalty and wide temperature range operation over120 K with 1.55 μm strained MQW-DFB laser module

STM 16 (2.488 Gbit/s) system operation over a wide DFB chip temperature range of more than 120 K (from -25°C to +95°C) is presented with dispersion penalty below 1 dB after transmission across 100 km standard fibre. DFB operation at 1.55 μm with a high sidemode suppression ratio of 40 dB is achieved within -40°C to +95°C. The lasers were realised using a BRS lateral structure and a quaternary InGaAsP MQW stack with six compressively strained quantum wells and a highly detuned DFB grating     

Temperature-tuned phase-matching properties ofLiB3O5 for Ti:sapphire laser frequency doubling

The temperature-tuned phase-matching properties for type-I frequency doubling of a tunable Ti:sapphire laser (740-900 nm) were measured in lithium triborate (LiB₃O₅). The wavelength dependence of the phase-matching angle, angular bandwidth, and spectral bandwidth in the 740-890-nm fundamental wavelength region at room temperature were also determined. Temperature-tuned phase-matching wavelengths for fixed phase-matching angles were measured from 20 to 213°C. Temperature bandwidths of 7.8 and 15.3°C-cm were obtained from the room temperature data at 886- and 760.5-nm phase-matching, respectively     

Dry-etched 650 nm AlGaInP visible-light laser diodes with operatingtime of over 3000 h

The authors have achieved CW operation of 650 nm GaInP/AlGaInP index waveguide-type visible-light laser diodes (LDs) with dry-etched mesa stripes fabricated by Cl₂ reactive ion beam etching. The threshold current of 47 mA and slope efficiency of 0.40 W/A are almost the same as those of a wet-etched LD fabricated from the same wafer (L=500 μm). The cross-sectional scanning electron microscope view of the buried mesa stripe shows that the dry-etched LD has a symmetric mesa shape resulting in a small focusing spot and stable mode operation. The wet-etched mesa, however, is asymmetric because a 6° misoriented substrate is used for this wavelength operation. An aging test with light output power of 3 mW at 50°C has revealed that these LDs have an operating time of over 3000 h, which represents a sufficient reliability for conventional uses     

High-temperature CW operation of planar buried-ridge structurelasers at λ=1.5 μm

GaInAsP/InP-PBRS lasers emitting at 1.5 μm have been fabricated by multiple liquid-phase epitaxy. Effective current confinement is achieved without current blocking layers. CW threshold current is as low as 9 mA at 25°C. Output powers per facet of up to 10 mW at 80°C and 3.5 mW at 100°C are obtained. The maximum operation temperature of 110°C is the highest value yet achieved with this type of laser at 1°5 μm