Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage
Abstract
The mechanisms that limit the temperature performance of diagonal GaAs/Al0.15GaAs0.85-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.
- Authors:
-
[1];
[2];
- 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)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1399568
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-2017-8933J
Journal ID: ISSN 0003-6951; 656406
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Applied Physics Letters
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 111; Journal Issue: 11; Journal ID: ISSN 0003-6951
- Publisher:
- American Institute of Physics (AIP)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS
Citation Formats
Albo, Asaf, Flores, Yuri V., Hu, Qing, and Reno, John L. Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage. United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.1063/1.4996567.
Albo, Asaf, Flores, Yuri V., Hu, Qing, & Reno, John L. Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage. United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4996567
Albo, Asaf, Flores, Yuri V., Hu, Qing, and Reno, John L. Mon .
"Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage". United States. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4996567. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1399568.
@article{osti_1399568,
title = {Two-well terahertz quantum cascade lasers with suppressed carrier leakage},
author = {Albo, Asaf and Flores, Yuri V. and Hu, Qing and Reno, John L.},
abstractNote = {The mechanisms that limit the temperature performance of diagonal GaAs/Al0.15GaAs0.85-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.},
doi = {10.1063/1.4996567},
journal = {Applied Physics Letters},
number = 11,
volume = 111,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Sep 11 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Mon Sep 11 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 22 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Tradeoffs between oscillator strength and lifetime in terahertz quantum cascade lasers
journal, November 2016
- Chan, Chun Wang I.; Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 20
Investigating temperature degradation in THz quantum cascade lasers by examination of temperature dependence of output power
journal, March 2015
- Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 106, Issue 13
Terahertz quantum cascade lasers operating up to ∼ 200 K with optimized oscillator strength and improved injection tunneling
journal, January 2012
- Fathololoumi, S.; Dupont, E.; Chan, C. W. I.
- Optics Express, Vol. 20, Issue 4
Two-well terahertz quantum-cascade laser with direct intrawell-phonon depopulation
journal, October 2009
- Kumar, Sushil; Chan, Chun Wang I.; Hu, Qing
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 95, Issue 14
186 K operation of terahertz quantum-cascade lasers based on a diagonal design
journal, March 2009
- Kumar, Sushil; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 94, Issue 13
Terahertz quantum cascade lasers with double-resonant-phonon depopulation
journal, June 2006
- Williams, Benjamin S.; Kumar, Sushil; Qin, Qi
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 88, Issue 26
Carrier Leakage Dynamics in Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers
journal, October 2017
- Albo, Asaf; Flores, Yuri V.
- IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 5
Carrier leakage into the continuum in diagonal GaAs/Al 0.15 GaAs terahertz quantum cascade lasers
journal, December 2015
- Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 24
Tunable Fano interference in intersubband absorption
journal, January 1996
- Faist, Jérome; Sirtori, Carlo; Capasso, Federico
- Optics Letters, Vol. 21, Issue 13
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]
journal, October 2017
- Flores, Yuri V.; Albo, Asaf
- IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 5
Temperature dependence of the key electro-optical characteristics for midinfrared emitting quantum cascade lasers
journal, August 2010
- Botez, D.; Kumar, S.; Shin, J. C.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 97, Issue 7
Experimental investigation of terahertz quantum cascade laser with variable barrier heights
journal, April 2014
- Jiang, Aiting; Matyas, Alpar; Vijayraghavan, Karun
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 115, Issue 16
Temperature-Driven Enhancement of the Stimulated Emission Rate in Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers
journal, February 2017
- Albo, Asaf; Flores, Yuri V.
- IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 1
Room temperature negative differential resistance in terahertz quantum cascade laser structures
journal, August 2016
- Albo, Asaf; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 8
Broadband THz lasing from a photon-phonon quantum cascade structure
journal, January 2010
- Scalari, G.; Amanti, M. I.; Walther, C.
- Optics Express, Vol. 18, Issue 8
Thermally activated leakage current in high-performance short-wavelength quantum cascade lasers
journal, April 2013
- Flores, Y. V.; Semtsiv, M. P.; Elagin, M.
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 113, Issue 13
Ground state terahertz quantum cascade lasers
journal, October 2012
- Chan, Chun Wang I.; Hu, Qing; Reno, John L.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 15
Impact of Interface Roughness Scattering on the Performance of GaAs/Al x Ga 1–x As Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers
journal, June 2017
- Flores, Yuri V.; Albo, Asaf
- IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 53, Issue 3
Works referencing / citing this record:
Split-well direct-phonon terahertz quantum cascade lasers
journal, May 2019
- Albo, Asaf; Flores, Yuri V.; Hu, Qing
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 19
Terahertz quantum cascade laser with non-resonant extraction
journal, May 2019
- Baranov, A. N.; Nguyen-Van, H.; Loghmari, Z.
- AIP Advances, Vol. 9, Issue 5
Thermoelectrically cooled THz quantum cascade laser operating up to 210 K
journal, July 2019
- Bosco, L.; Franckié, M.; Scalari, G.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 1
Thermoelectrically cooled THz quantum cascade laser operating up to 210 K
text, January 2019
- Bosco, Lorenzo; Franckié, Martin; Scalari, Giacomo
- ETH Zurich
Thermoelectrically cooled THz quantum cascade laser operating up to 210 K
text, January 2019
- Bosco, Lorenzo; Franckié, Martin; Scalari, Giacomo
- arXiv
Barrier Height Tuning of Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers for High-Temperature Operation
journal, October 2018
- Kainz, Martin Alexander; Schönhuber, Sebastian; Andrews, Aaron Maxwell
- ACS Photonics, Vol. 5, Issue 11