This paper is a brief summary of the technological development and state-of-the-art performance of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) produced at the Centre for Quantum Devides. Laser design will be discussed, as well as experimental details of device fabrication. Recent work has focused on development of high peak and average power QCLs emitting at room temperature and above. Scaling of the output is demonstrated by increasing the number of emitting regions in the waveguide core. At λ = 9 um, over 7 W of peak power has bee demonstrated at room temperature for a single diode, with an average power of 300 mW at 6% duty cycle. At shorter wavelengths, laser development includes the use of highly strain-balanced heterostructures in order to maintain a high conduction band offset and minimize leakage current. At λ = 6 um, utilizing a high reflective coating and epilayer-down mounting of the laser, we have demonstrated 225 mW of average power from a single facet at room temperature. Lastly, these results are put in the perspective of other reported results and possible future directions are discussed.
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In this paper ∼16 μm-emitting multimode InP-related quantum cascade lasers are presented with the maximum operating temperature 373 K, peak and average optical power equal to 720 mW and 4.8 mW at 303 K, respectively, and the characteristic temperature (T0) 272 K. Two types of the lasers were fabricated and characterized: the lasers with a SiO2 layer left untouched in the area of the metal-free window on top of the ridge, and the lasers with the SiO2 layer removed from the metal-free window area. Dual-wavelength operation was obtained, at λ ∼ 15.6 μm (641 cm−1) and at λ ∼ 16.6 μm (602 cm−1) for lasers with SiO2 removed, while within the emission spectrum of the lasers with SiO2 left untouched only the former lasing peak was present. The parameters of these devices like threshold current, optical power and emission wavelength are compared. Lasers without the SiO2 layer showed ∼15% lower threshold current than these ones with the SiO2 layer. The optical powers for lasers without SiO2 layer were almost twice higher than for the lasers with the SiO2 layer on the top of the ridge.
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Non-equilibrium coupled electron-phonon system in active region of the quantum cascade intersubband laser is investigated. Distribution functions and gain spectra of a three-subband double-quantum-well active region are obtained as a function of temperature and injection current. The important role of the non-equilibrium phonons at lasing threshold is shown and discussed in details. It is shown that the threshold current is strongly dependent of the power dissipated in the active region in steady state. The numerical calculations for an 8.5-µm laser illustrate the general issues of relaxation kinetics in quantum cascade lasers. Temperature dependence of the threshold current is obtained in a good agreement with the experiment. We also present the results of fabrication of high-T₀ quantum cascade lasers operating in 5- and 8-µm bands.
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