Temperature dependence of the key electro-optical characteristics for midinfrared emitting quantum cascade lasers

  • D. Botez
  • , S. Kumar
  • , J. C. Shin
  • , L. J. Mawst
  • , I. Vurgaftman
  • , J. R. Meyer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

83 Scopus citations

Abstract

The equations for threshold-current density Jth, differential quantum efficiency ηd, and maximum wallplug efficiency ηwp,max for quantum-cascade lasers (QCLs) are modified for electron leakage and backfilling. A thermal-excitation model of "hot" injected electrons from the upper laser state to upper active-region states is used to calculate leakage currents. The calculated characteristic temperature T0 for Jth is found to agree well with experiment for both conventional and deep-well (DW) QCLs. For conventional QCLs ηwp,max is found to be strongly temperature dependent; explaining experimental data. At 300 K for optimized DW-QCLs, front-facet, continuous-wave ηwp,max values >20% are projected.

Original languageEnglish
Article number071101
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume97
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 16 Aug 2010

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