Aref Chowdhury

GaN nanotip pyramids formed by anisotropic etching

We experimentally demonstrate the formation of GaN nanotip pyramids by selective and anisotropic etching of N-polar GaN in KOH solution. For samples grown with adjacent Ga- and N-polar regions on the same wafer, the KOH solution was found to selectively etch only the N-polar surface while leaving the Ga-polar surface intact. An aggregation of hexagonal pyramids with well defined {10 1 1} facets and very sharp tips with diameters less than ∼20 nm were formed. The density of the pyramids can be controlled by varying the KOH concentration, solution temperature or the etch duration. The GaN etching activation energy is estimated to be Ea≈0.587 eV. Dense GaN pyramids with sharp tips have applications in both electronic and photonic devices.

Second-harmonic generation in periodically poled GaN

We report the experimental demonstration of second-harmonic generation in periodically poled GaN by first-order quasiphase matching. The periodically poled structure was grown by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy. We observed about 9 μW of second-harmonic power from a fundamental input laser wavelength of 1658.6 nm with a normalized conversion efficiency of 12.76% W−1 cm−2. The ability to perform nonlinear wavelength conversion by periodic poling and the fact that GaN has a very wide window of transparency, pave the way for GaN to be used for nonlinear optical devices in telecommunications as well as a nonlinear light source for biochemical detection in the far infrared and deep ultraviolet.

Optical phase conjugation and pseudolinear transmission

We describe the use of optical phase conjugation (OPC) to suppress intrachannel nonlinearities that limit pseudolinear transmission. We show that OPC combined with appropriate dispersion mapping is effective in suppressing intrachannel nonlinearities, even in the absence of signal-power evolution symmetry that is generally required by OPC to compensate fiber nonlinearity. An increase in signal power by 5.5 dB is observed when a single OPC is used for 40-Gbit/s pseudolinear transmission over 32 x 100 km of passive-fiber spans.

Low loss GaN at 1550nm

We report absorption loss coefficients at 1550nm of free-standing GaN grown by hydride vapor phase epitaxy. We measured propagation loss values at numerous locations of the facets and observed an average of 2.41dB∕cm and 1.85dB∕cm for transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations, respectively, in the low loss region of the sample. The minimum loss values in the sample were found to be 0.82dB∕cm (TE) and 0.61dB∕cm (TM). The ability to achieve such low propagation loss coefficients in GaN opens up the possibility of using this material in a variety of integrated optics and nonlinear optics applications.