We present an optical spectroscopic study of InGaAs/AlInAs active region of quantum cascade lasers grown by low pressure metal organic vapor phase epitaxy combined with subwavelength gratings fabricated by reactive ion etching. Fourier-transformed photoluminescence measurements were used to compare the emission properties of structures before and after processing the gratings. Our results demonstrate a significant increase of the photoluminescence intensity related to intersubband transitions in the mid-infrared, which is attributed to coupling with the grating modes via so called photonic Fano resonances. Our findings demonstrate a promising method for enhancing the emission in optoelectronic devices operating in a broad range of application-relevant infrared.
We design, fabricate, characterize, and compare 980 nm vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) with monolithic high contrast gratings (MHCGs) as top coupling mirrors. The MHCG is a series of parallel, rectangular stripes etched into a uniform GaAs epitaxial surface layer via electron-beam lithography and inductively coupled reactive ion etching, with specific grating period, height, and fill factor (defined as the grating bar width divided by the grating period). To boost the MHCG’s optical power reflectance at 980 nm and the width of the optical stopband we add a 5.5-period p-doped distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) beneath the MHCG grating, thus forming a composite DBR plus MHCG top coupling mirror. The bottom n-doped DBR is a conventional all-semiconductor AlGaAs/GaAs DBR with 37-periods on a GaAs substrate. We fabricate single 980 nm DBR MHCG VCSELs with two oxide aperture diameters on quarter wafer pieces from starting 3- inch diameter VCSEL epitaxial wafers. Each quarter wafer contains six complete unit cells, and each unit cell is a twodimensional array of single VCSELs in 16 rows and 15 columns. We for example set a constant but different grating period in five of the unit cells and vary the grating fill factors from column to column and we vary the oxide aperture diameters from 1 to 9 Pm in the rows, thus yielding a large variety of VCSEL diodes with differing MHCG parameters for us to compare. We perform room temperature on-wafer probe testing of the static optical output power-current-voltage (LIV) characteristics and emission spectra and compare the impact of the grating designs on these test results. We report record static LIV performance for our DBR MHCG VCSELs with threshold current below 1 mA and optical output power exceeding 1.3 mW. We observe room temperature bias current dependent mode emission for example single mode wavelength tuning ranges up to 12 nm.
The key component of a quantum cascade vertical cavity surface emitting laser (QC VCSEL) is a monolithic high-contrast grating (MHCG) that replaces one of the distributed Bragg mirrors (DBR). The grating induces the polarization component necessary to stimulated emission in quantum cascade active regions embedded in MHCG. The complex electrical and optical phenomena defining the performance of the structure depends on the grating parameters (stripes dimensions, position, thickness and doping concentrations). This work presents optimization of QC VCSELs that is aimed to achieve minimal thresholds currents in the pulse operation regime.
Quantum-cascade lasers (QCL) enable emission in a broad range of infrared radiation unavailable for convectional quantum well bipolar lasers. However in-plane geometry of QCLs hinders achieving properties required in numerous applications which are inherently possessed by vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). In proposed design of QC-VCSEL the role of top mirror and element inducing component of electric field necessary to stimulated emission in quantum cascades is served by subwavelength monolithic high-refractive-index contrast grating (MHCG) in which quantum cascade active region is embedded. This paper based on numerical analysis presents influence of QC-VCSELs configuration details on threshold currents and mode distributions.
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