Room Temperature Interband Cascade Lasers

An analysis of the threshold current densities and differential slope efficiencies in interband cascade lasers with type-II active regions revealed lower Auger recombination rates than anticipated theoretically or using the data from prior experiments. Furthermore, a new design of the waveguide yielded room-temperature internal losses as low as approx. = 6/cm. The combination of these advances with improvements to the processing of narrow ridges has led operation up to 335 K in continuous-wave mode for devices emitting at 3.3-3.7 microns. An 8.7-micron-wide ridge without facet coatings produced up to 23 mW of cw power at 300 K, and displayed a maximum wall-plug efficiency of 2.0%.
Presented at the International Conference on Narrow Gap Semiconductors and Systems (14th) held in Sendai, Japan on 13-17 July 2009. Published in Physics Procedia, v3 p1195-1200, 2010. The original document contains color images.