A tunneling injection quantum well laser

Abstract

Summary form only given. A tunneling injection mechanism in a GaAs-based laser is demonstrated. The preliminary GaAs-based devices, grown by molecular beam epitaxy, have an 80 AA In/sub 0.10/Ga/sub 0.90/As active single quantum well and AlAs tunneling barriers. These lasers show a characteristic peaking in the small signal modulation response at a particular drive current, which is believed to be related to the tunneling. The principle of operation promises to be a 'cold' laser at high injection levels, eliminating a broad thermal carrier distribution, and therefore Auger recombination and chirp are expected to be suppressed, particularly in InP-based devices. In addition, tunneling of carriers into the active well will ensure very large modulation bandwidths. A peaked gain will ensure higher mode selectivity. >