Continuous-wave operation of GaInAs-AlGaAsSb quantum cascade lasers

We report on the demonstration of continuous-wave (CW) operation of GaInAs-AlGaAsSb quantum cascade (QC) lasers. By placing a 2.5-/spl mu/m-thick gold layer on both sides of the laser ridge to extract heat from the active region in the lateral direction, together with mounting the device epilayer down, we have achieved CW operation of GaInAs-AlGaAsSb QC lasers composed of 25 stages of active/injection regions. The maximum CW operating temperature of the lasers is 94 K, and the emission wavelength is around /spl lambda//spl sim/4.65 /spl mu/m. For a device with the size of 10/spl times/2000 /spl mu/m/sup 2/, the CW optical output power per facet is 13 mW at 42 K and 4 mW at 94 K. The CW threshold current density is 1.99 kA/cm/sup 2/ at 42 K, and 2.08 kA/cm/sup 2/ at 94 K, respectively.     

Improved CW operation of quantum cascade lasers with epitaxial-sideheat-sinking

First results on the epilayer-side mounting of quantum cascade (QC) lasers are presented. Operated in continuous-wave (CW) mode, these lasers are superior to substrate-bonded devices. The maximum CW temperature is raised by 20 K (up to 175 K), and, at comparable heat sink temperatures, the performance with respect to threshold current, output power, and slope efficiency is greatly improved for the epilayer-side mounted devices. QC-laser-specific mounting procedures are discussed in this letter, such as the high reflectivity coating of the back-facet and the front-facet cleaving after mounting. Modeling of the temperature distribution inside the QC laser shows a strong temperature gradient within the active waveguide core, which partly explains the still low maximum CW operating temperatures     

GaAs/AlGaAs quantum cascade microlasers based on monolithic semiconductor-air Bragg mirrors

Edge emitting GaAs-based quantum cascade microlasers at a wavelength of 9 /spl mu/m were realised by monolithic integration of photonic bandgap mirrors based on deeply etched air-semiconductor Bragg gratings. The shortest operating device with Bragg mirrors on both sides has a cavity length of 180 /spl mu/m.     

Beam properties of AlGaAs power lasers with high-quality etched mirrors

High-quality etched mirrors for AlGaAs/GaAs power lasers for applications in optical storage have been fabricated by chemically assisted ion-beam etching (CAIBE). In order to ensure flat mirror facets of the ridge-waveguide lasers, a flared-waveguide end section is used. This results in a very slight mirror roughness of approximately 20 nm across the beam cross section, and yields excellent beam properties allowing diffraction-limited focusing up to 50-mW output power.<>     

Room temperature operation of microdisc lasers with submilliamp threshold current

Electrically pumped whispering-gallery mode microdisc lasers with singlemode operation and submilliamp threshold current at room temperature are demonstrated. The device consists of an InGaAs/InGaAsP multiple quantum well (MQW) structure formed into a 2-10 mu m diameter disc approximately 0.1 mu m thick. These microdiscs are supported on an InP pedestal.<>     

Spectral engineering of terahertz quantum cascade lasers using focused ion beam etched photonic lattices

Focused ion beam etching has been used to introduce one-dimensional photonic lattices, of periods 9.11, 9.24, 9.44 /spl mu/m, between the cleaved facets of three 4.44 THz Fabry-Perot quantum cascade lasers. Singlemode lasing has been achieved at precisely defined wavelengths of 67.59, 68.48, 70.00 /spl mu/m, respectively.     

Embedded-stripe GaAs-GaAlAs double-heterostructure lasers with polycrystalline GaAsP layers--II: Lasers with etched mirrors

Monolithic CW lasers with low threshold are reported in which mesa stripes are embedded with vapor-phase-grown high-resistivity GaAsP layers and cavity mirrors are formed by chemical etching. An etching solution consisting of NaOH, H2O2, and NH4OH has turned out to offer excellently flat-cavity mirrors on     

High-performance quantum cascade lasers with electric-field-freeundoped superlattice

An optimized design of quantum cascade lasers with electric field free undoped superlattice active regions is presented. In these structures the superlattice is engineered so that: (1) the first two extended states of the upper miniband are separated by an optical phonon to avoid phonon bottleneck effects and concentrate the injected electron density in the lower state and (2) the oscillator strength of the laser transition is maximized. The injectors' doping profile is also optimized by concentrating the doping in a single quantum well to reduce the electron density in the active material. These design changes result in major improvements of the pulse/continuous-wave performance such as a weak temperature dependence of threshold (T₀=167 K), high peak powers (100-200 mW at 300 K) and higher CW operating temperatures for devices emitting around at λ~8.5 μm     

Optimised device processing for continuous-wave operation in GaAs-based quantum cascade lasers

A significant improvement in the maximum continuous-wave operating temperature of GaAs-based quantum cascade lasers, T/sub max/=140 K, is reported. This has been achieved through optimised device processing that significantly reduces the total power consumption of the device and hence its self-heating.     

High-power continuous-wave quantum cascade lasers

High-power continuous-wave (CW) laser action is reported for a GaInAs-AlInAs quantum cascade structure operating in the mid-infrared (λ≃5 μm). Gain optimization and reduced heating effects have been achieved by employing a modulation-doped funnel injector with a three-well vertical-transition active region and by adopting InP as the waveguide cladding material to improve thermal dissipation and lateral conductance. A CW optical power as high as 0.7 W per facet has been obtained at 20 K with a slope efficiency of 582 mW/A, which corresponds to a value of the differential quantum efficiency η_d=4.78 much larger than unity, proving that each electron injected above threshold contributes to the optical field a number of photons equal to the number of periods in the structure. The lasers have been operated CW up to 110 K and more than 200 mW per facet have still been measured at liquid nitrogen temperature. The high overall performance of the lasers is also attested by the large “wall plug” efficiency, which, for the best device, has been computed to be more than 8.5% at 20 K. The spectral analysis has shown finally that the emission is single-mode for some devices up to more than 300 mW at low temperature     

Photonic-crystal distributed-feedback quantum cascade lasers

Because of an intrinsically low linewidth-enhancement factor, the quantum cascade laser (QCL) is especially favorable for patterning with a recently proposed 2-D photonic crystal (PC) lattice that substantially increases the device area over which optical coherence can be maintained. In this work, we use an original time-domain Fourier-transform (TDFT) algorithm to theoretically investigate the beam quality and spectral purity of gain-guided PC distributed-feedback (DFB) quantum cascade lasers. The conventional 1-D DFB laser and also the angled-grating DFB (α-DFB) laser are special cases of the PCDFB geometry. By searching the parameter space consisting of tilt angle, coupling coefficients, stripe width, and cavity length, we have theoretically optimized the PCDFB gratings for QCL gain regions. At a wavelength of 4.6 μm, the simulations project single-mode emission from stripes as wide as 1.2 mm, and etendues of no more than three times the diffraction limit for 2-mm stripes. We also examine the tolerances required for single-mode and high-brightness operation. Comparisons are made to analogous simulations of a-DFB QCL lasers     

Edge-emitting lasers with short-period semiconductor/air distributed Bragg reflector mirrors

We demonstrate a short-cavity edge-emitting 0.98-/spl mu/m GaAs-based laser with semiconductor/air distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) mirrors made by reactive ion etching (RIE). The dc and small-signal modulation properties of 100-/spl mu/m-long lasers have been measured and are characterized by I/sub th/=4.5 mA and f/sub -3dB/=30 GHz under pulsed conditions, respectively. The far-field pattern of light emanating from the DBR is also measured.     

GaAs-based quantum cascade lasers with native oxide-defined currentconfinement

The development of broad area (width ≈100 μm) GaAs-based quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) with 20 μm-wide current apertures defined by selective oxidation of the Al_0.9Ga_0.1As optical cladding layers is reported. Processing the lasers in this way enhances heat removal from the active region of the structure, allowing improved pulsed performance at higher duty cycles compared with conventional ridge waveguide structures     

Deep-etched distributed Bragg reflector lasers with curved mirrors.Experiments and modeling

A semiconductor laser with deep-etched distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) supporting a planar Gaussian mode has been experimentally and theoretically studied. A 90-μm-long laser with two-groove DBRs has a low threshold current of 7 mA and a maximum side mode suppression of 17.6 dB under continuous operation. The laser resonator supports a mode that closely resembles the desired planar Gaussian mode. The reflectivities of the deep-etched DBRs were experimentally determined using broad area devices, and the reflection, transmission, and scattering properties of the DBRs were simulated using a finite-difference time-domain model. The simulations show that deep grooves, covering the full transverse extent of the guided mode, are needed to maximize the reflectivity and to minimize the scattering loss. A beam-propagation model was used to simulate the laser resonator. The simulations (as well as the experiments) show that the laser is sensitive to thermal effects. Thermal lensing narrows the mode waist, and therefore increases the spatial hole burning in the center of the resonator where the intensity is at its maximum. At high drive currents, this leads to a degradation of the spatial mode quality. The simulations also indicate that a laser with optimized DBRs (one one- and one two-groove DBRs with an etch depth of 1 μm) would have a threshold current less than 2 mA and support a high-quality planar Gaussian mode to an output power of 9 mW under continuous operation     

High-speed operation of interband cascade lasers

High-speed interband cascade lasers have been fabricated and the first experimental evidence that these devices can be directly modulated at a frequency of 3.2 GHz and above is reported.     

Resonant tunneling in quantum cascade lasers

Experimental evidence that in quantum cascade lasers electron injection into the active region is controlled by resonant tunneling between two-dimensional subbands is discussed. A quantitative analysis is carried out using an equation for the current density based on a tight-binding approximation. Electron injection into the active region is optimized when the current density is limited by the lifetime of the excited state of the laser transition. In this regime, quasi-equilibrium is reached between the population of the injector ground state and that of the excited state of the laser transition characterized by a common quasi-Fermi level. The design of the injector depends on the selected laser active region; in particular, the choice of physical parameters, such as doping concentration and injection barrier thicknesses, is in general different for vertical or diagonal transition lasers. The paper concludes with an investigation of the transport properties at threshold and its dependence on stimulated emission; a relationship between the differential resistance above threshold and the value of the slope efficiency is deduced     

InAs-based distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers

InAs/AlSb distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers are presented. The lasers can operate in the single frequency regime at 3.34-3.38 mum in the 0-100degC temperature range in pulse mode. The wavelength tuning rate of the lasers is 0.27 nm/K and continuous tuning range up to 10 nm can be achieved.     

高输出功率太赫兹量子级联激光器与温度特性

半导体太赫兹量子级联激光器(THz QCL)是一种相干性好线宽窄的太赫兹辐射源,有潜力获得高的输出功率.采用基于非平衡格林函数(NEGF)方法的计算工具设计、生长、制备了基于砷化镓系材料的THz QCL.在10 K温度下,峰值功率达到270 mW,平均功率为2. 4 mW,单位面积的输出功率与已报道的最高值相当.采用NEGF方法对器件的温度变化特性做了详细的分析.     

Multi-diode cascade VCSEL with 130% differential quantum efficiencyat CW room temperature operation

The room temperature, continuous-wave (CW) operation of a fabricated multi-diode cascade vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at 980 nm wavelength, with a differential quantum efficiency exceeding unity, is demonstrated for the first time. A maximum wallplug efficiency of 16%, is obtained at a driving current of three times the threshold     

Continuous-wave operation of 5 /spl mu/m quantum cascade lasers with high-reflection coated facets

A report is presented on the continuous-wave operation of /spl lambda//spl sime/5 /spl mu/m GaInAs/AlInAs/InP-based quantum cascade lasers up to a heatsink temperature of 222 K (-51/spl deg/C). The devices are mounted epi-side down with high-reflection coated facets. The dissipated electrical power at threshold amounts to only 2.3 W at 222 K.