W. Fang

Theoretical prediction of GaN lasing and temperature sensitivity

We present a theoretical prediction of the threshold current density and the temperature sensitivity of a GaN laser operating in the intrinsic band‐to‐band transition. We calculate the material gain and spontaneous emission spectrum for unintentionally doped bulk GaN under carrier injection. All stimulated and spontaneous emission calculations are compared to those of bulk GaAs. The transparency carrier density of GaN is found to be more than four times that of GaAs, and the momentum matrix element for optical transitions in bulk GaN is estimated to be about one‐third the value in GaAs. In addition, the differential gain is approximately four times smaller in GaN. These differences are attributed to the larger effective masses of the electrons and holes in GaN. The calculated characteristic temperature T0 of the threshold current density for a GaN laser ranges from 185 to 220 K, which agrees well with the recently observed data from optical pumping experiments.

Amplified spontaneous emission spectroscopy in strained quantum-well lasers

Amplified spontaneous emission spectroscopy is used to extract the gain and refractive index spectra systematically. We obtain the gain and differential gain spectra using the Hakki-Paoli method. The refractive index profile, the induced change in refractive index by an incremental current, and the linewidth enhancement factor are measured from the Fabry-Perot peaks and the current-induced peak shifts in the amplified spontaneous emission spectra. The measured optical gain and refractive index are then compared with our theoretical model for strained quantum-well lasers. We show that a complete theoretical model for calculating the electronic band structure, the optical constant, and the linewidth enhancement factor agrees very well with the experiment. Our approach demonstrates that amplified spontaneous emission spectroscopy can be a good diagnostic tool to characterize laser diodes, extract the optical gain and index profiles, and confirm material parameters such as the strained quantum-well band structure parameters for a semiconductor structure under carrier injection.

Longitudinal spatial inhomogeneities in high-power semiconductor lasers

We study the spatial distribution of the temperature, gain, and carrier density along the longitudinal direction of a semiconductor laser cavity. In high-power laser diodes, the use of asymmetrical facet reflectivities creates a spatially nonuniform photon intensity profile and results in inhomogeneous temperature and carrier distributions along the active stripe. These profiles are determined from direct measurements of blackbody radiation and the spontaneous emission from the laser cavity. The temperature of the active stripe is observed to be significantly higher than that of the heat sink during lasing, and the effect of temperature on the modal gain spectrum is analyzed. We demonstrate that the local carrier density and optical gain within a laser are not pinned beyond threshold. A spatially inhomogeneous gain profile is possible in laser cavities as long as the threshold condition that the averaged round-trip gain equals the total losses is maintained. A theoretical model is presented which explains the observed experimental data. >

Redshifting of a bound-to-continuum GaAs/AlGaAs quantum-well infrared photodetector response via laser annealing

The effect of laser annealing on important detector characteristics such as dark current, spectral response, and absolute responsivity is investigated for bound-to-continuum GaAs/AlGaAs quantum-well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) operating in the 8–12 μm wavelength regime. A set of experiments was conducted on QWIPs fabricated from both as-grown and laser-annealed multiple-quantum-well structures. Compared to the as-grown structure, the peak spectral response of the laser-annealed structure was shifted to longer wavelengths, though absolute responsivity was decreased by about a factor of two. In addition, over a wide range of bias levels, the laser-annealed QWIPs exhibited a slightly lower dark current compared to the as-grown QWIPs. Thus, the postgrowth control of GaAs/AlGaAs quantum-well composition profiles by laser annealing offers unique opportunities to fine tune various aspects of a QWIP’s response.

GaAs/AlGaAs quantum-well infrared photodetectors on GaAs-on-Si substrates

In this letter, we describe the characteristics of molecular beam epitaxy GaAs/AlGaAs quantum-well infrared photodetectors (QWIP’s) grown on a GaAs substrate, and on a GaAs-on-Si substrate produced by metalorganic chemical-vapor deposition. Important issues for QWIP applications such as dark current, spectral response, and absolute responsivity are studied. We find that compared to a similar detector structure grown on a GaAs substrate, the detector grown on a GaAs-on-Si substrate exhibits similar dark current and absolute responsivity while displaying a small blueshift in the spectral response.