Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage

Albo, Asaf; Flores, Yuri V.; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L.

doi:10.1063/1.4996567

Title: Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage

Journal Article · Mon Sep 11 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4996567· OSTI ID:1399568

^[1];

^[2]; Hu, Qing ^[2]; Reno, John L. ^[3]

Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Bar-Ilan Univ., Ramat Gan (Israel)
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

The mechanisms that limit the temperature performance of diagonal GaAs/Al_0.15GaAs_0.85-based terahertz quantum cascade lasers (THz-QCLs) have been identified as thermally activated leakage of charge carriers through excited states into the continuum. THz-QCLs with energetically higher-laying excited states supported by sufficiently high barriers aim to eliminate these leakage mechanisms and lead to improved temperature performance. Although suppression of thermally activated carrier leakage was realized in a three-well THz-QCL based on a resonant-phonon scheme, no improvement in the temperature performance was reported thus far. Here, we report a major improvement in the temperature performance of a two-quantum-well direct-phonon THz-QCL structure. We show that the improved laser performance is due to the suppression of the thermally activated carrier leakage into the continuum with the increase in the injection barrier height. Furthermore, we demonstrate that high-barrier two-well structures can support a clean three-level laser system at elevated temperatures, which opens the opportunity to achieve temperature performance beyond the state-of-the-art.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Cite

Export

Save

Research Organization:: Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC04-94AL85000

OSTI ID:: 1399568

Report Number(s):: SAND-2017-8933J; 656406

Journal Information:: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 11; ISSN 0003-6951

Publisher:: American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Citation Metrics:

Cited by: 22 works

Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (18)

Tradeoffs between oscillator strength and lifetime in terahertz quantum cascade lasers Chan, Chun Wang I.; Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 20 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4967244	journal	November 2016
Investigating temperature degradation in THz quantum cascade lasers by examination of temperature dependence of output power Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 106, Issue 13 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4916961	journal	March 2015
Terahertz quantum cascade lasers operating up to ∼ 200 K with optimized oscillator strength and improved injection tunneling Fathololoumi, S.; Dupont, E.; Chan, C. W. I. Optics Express, Vol. 20, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.20.003866	journal	January 2012
Two-well terahertz quantum-cascade laser with direct intrawell-phonon depopulation Kumar, Sushil; Chan, Chun Wang I.; Hu, Qing Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 95, Issue 14 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3243459	journal	October 2009
186 K operation of terahertz quantum-cascade lasers based on a diagonal design Kumar, Sushil; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 94, Issue 13 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3114418	journal	March 2009
Terahertz quantum cascade lasers with double-resonant-phonon depopulation Williams, Benjamin S.; Kumar, Sushil; Qin, Qi Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 88, Issue 26 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2216112	journal	June 2006
Carrier Leakage Dynamics in Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers Albo, Asaf; Flores, Yuri V. IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1109/JQE.2017.2740261	journal	October 2017
Carrier leakage into the continuum in diagonal GaAs/Al _0.15 GaAs terahertz quantum cascade lasers Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 24 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4937455	journal	December 2015
Tunable Fano interference in intersubband absorption Faist, Jérome; Sirtori, Carlo; Capasso, Federico Optics Letters, Vol. 21, Issue 13 https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.21.000985	journal	January 1996
Erratum to “Impact of Interface Roughness Scattering on the Performance of GaAs/Al $_{\mathrm {\mathbf {x}}}$ Ga $_{\mathrm {\mathbf {1-x}}}$ As Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers” [Jun 17 Art. no. 2300208] Flores, Yuri V.; Albo, Asaf IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1109/JQE.2017.2732404	journal	October 2017
Temperature dependence of the key electro-optical characteristics for midinfrared emitting quantum cascade lasers Botez, D.; Kumar, S.; Shin, J. C. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 97, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3478836	journal	August 2010
Experimental investigation of terahertz quantum cascade laser with variable barrier heights Jiang, Aiting; Matyas, Alpar; Vijayraghavan, Karun Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 115, Issue 16 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4873461	journal	April 2014
Temperature-Driven Enhancement of the Stimulated Emission Rate in Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers Albo, Asaf; Flores, Yuri V. IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1109/JQE.2016.2631899	journal	February 2017
Room temperature negative differential resistance in terahertz quantum cascade laser structures Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4961617	journal	August 2016
Broadband THz lasing from a photon-phonon quantum cascade structure Scalari, G.; Amanti, M. I.; Walther, C. Optics Express, Vol. 18, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.18.008043	journal	January 2010
Thermally activated leakage current in high-performance short-wavelength quantum cascade lasers Flores, Y. V.; Semtsiv, M. P.; Elagin, M. Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 113, Issue 13 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4798358	journal	April 2013
Ground state terahertz quantum cascade lasers Chan, Chun Wang I.; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 15 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4759043	journal	October 2012
Impact of Interface Roughness Scattering on the Performance of GaAs/Al _x Ga _1–x As Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers Flores, Yuri V.; Albo, Asaf IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1109/JQE.2017.2689743	journal	June 2017

Cited By (6)

Split-well direct-phonon terahertz quantum cascade lasers Albo, Asaf; Flores, Yuri V.; Hu, Qing Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 19 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5089854	journal	May 2019
Terahertz quantum cascade laser with non-resonant extraction Baranov, A. N.; Nguyen-Van, H.; Loghmari, Z. AIP Advances, Vol. 9, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5092855	journal	May 2019
Thermoelectrically cooled THz quantum cascade laser operating up to 210 K Bosco, L.; Franckié, M.; Scalari, G. Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5110305	journal	July 2019
Thermoelectrically cooled THz quantum cascade laser operating up to 210 K Bosco, Lorenzo; Franckié, Martin; Scalari, Giacomo ETH Zurich https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000351734	text	January 2019
Thermoelectrically cooled THz quantum cascade laser operating up to 210 K Bosco, Lorenzo; Franckié, Martin; Scalari, Giacomo arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1911.06582	text	January 2019
Barrier Height Tuning of Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers for High-Temperature Operation Kainz, Martin Alexander; Schönhuber, Sebastian; Andrews, Aaron Maxwell ACS Photonics, Vol. 5, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.8b01280	journal	October 2018

Similar Records

Room temperature negative differential resistance in terahertz quantum cascade laser structures

Journal Article · Wed Aug 24 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Applied Physics Letters · OSTI ID:1399568

Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L.

Room temperature negative differential resistance in terahertz quantum cascade laser structures

Journal Article · Mon Aug 22 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Applied Physics Letters · OSTI ID:1399568

Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L.

Carrier leakage into the continuum in diagonal GaAs/Al{sub 0.15}GaAs terahertz quantum cascade lasers

Journal Article · Mon Dec 14 00:00:00 EST 2015 · Applied Physics Letters · OSTI ID:1399568

Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS

Title: Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage

Citation Formats

References (18)

Cited By (6)

Similar Records

Related Subjects