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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
LASER 2
• PRICIPLE OF OPERATION 3
• LASER DIODE 4
PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION 5
TYPES OF LASER DIODE 6
SEMICONDUCTOR LASER 7
QUANTUM DOT 9
GROWTH TECHNIQUES 12
CHALLENGES 13
SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF QUANTUM DOT 14
LASERS
CONCLUSION 24
INTRODUCTION
LASER
Common light sources, such as the electric light bulb, emit photons in
all directions, usually over a wide spectrum of wavelengths. Most light
sources are also incoherent; i.e., there is no fixed phase relationship between
the photons emitted by the light source.
Laser light can be highly intense — able to cut steel and other metals.
The beam emitted by a laser often has a very small divergence (highly
collimated). A perfectly collimated beam cannot be created, due to the effect
of diffraction, but a laser beam will spread much less than a beam of light
generated by other means. A beam generated by a small laboratory laser
such as a helium-neon (HeNe) laser spreads to approximately 1 mile (1.6
kilometres) in diameter if shone from the Earth's surface to the Moon. Some
lasers, especially semiconductor lasers due to their small size, produce very
Principle Of Operation
Even low-power lasers with only a few milliwatts of output power can
be hazardous to a person's eyesight. The coherence and low divergence of
laser light means that it can be focused by the eye into an extremely small
spot on the retina, resulting in localised burning and permanent damage in
seconds. Lasers are classified by wavelength and maximum output power
into safety classes numbered I (inherently safe) to IV (even scattered light
can cause eye and/or skin damage). Laser products available for consumers,
such as CD players and laser pointers are usually in class I or II
LASER DIODE
Principle of operation
When a diode is forward biased, holes from the p-region are injected
into the n-region, and electrons from the n-region are injected into the p-
region. If electrons and holes are present in the same region, they may
radiatively recombine—that is, the electron "falls into" the hole and emits a
photon with the energy of the bandgap. This is called spontaneous emission,
and is the main source of light in a light-emitting diode.
Under suitable conditions, the electron and the hole may coexist in the
same area for quite some time (on the order of microseconds) before they
recombine. If a photon of exactly the right frequency happens along within
this time period, recombination may be stimulated by the photon. This
causes another photon of the same frequency to be emitted, with exactly the
same direction, polarization and phase as the first photon.
The type of laser diode just described is called a homojunction laser diode,
for reasons which should soon become clear. Unfortunately, they are
extremely inefficient. They require so much power that they can only be
operated in short "pulses;" otherwise the semiconductor would melt.
Although historically important and easy to explain, such devices are not
practical.
SEMICONDUCTOR LASER
If the middle layer is made thin enough, it starts acting like a quantum
well. This means that in the vertical direction, electron energy is quantised.
The difference between quantum well energy levels can be used for the laser
action instead of the bandgap. This is very useful since the wavelength of
light emitted can be tuned simply by altering the thickness of the layer. The
efficiency of a quantum well laser is greater than that of a bulk laser due to a
tailoring of the distrubution of electrons and holes that are involved in the
stimulated emission (light producing) process.
The problem with these devices is that the thin layer is simply too
small to effectively confine the light. To compensate, another two layers are
added on, outside the first three. These layers have a lower refractive index
than the centre layers, and hence confine the light effectively. Such a design
is called a separate confinement heterostructure (SCH) laser diode.
Even greater benefits have been predicted for lasers with quantum dot
active layers. Arakawa and Sakaki (1982) predicted in the early 1980s that
quantum dot lasers should exhibit performance that is less temperature-
dependent than existing semiconductor lasers, and that will in particular not
degrade at elevated temperatures. Other benefits of quantum dot active
layers include further reduction in threshold currents and an increase in
differential gain-that is, more efficient laser operation (Asada et al. 1986).
Quantum dots.
Quantum dots are so small that quantum mechanical effects come into
play in controlling their behavior. Quantum mechanics apply in the
microscopic realm but its effects are largely unseen and unfelt in our
macroscopic world
GROWTH TECHNIQUES
CHALLENGES
states (due perhaps to some preferred dot sizes), a gain that is dot size or
shape dependent (due to size and shape dependence of either the oscillator
strength or the efficiency with which dots capture carriers) and a modulation
of the losses by constructive interference with the reflection of a transverse
leaky mode propagating in the transparent substrate. The effects due to the
leaky mode have previously been reported in quantum well lasers operating
at the same wavelength. They lead to an optical mode loss and an optical
confinement factor that vary as a function of wavelength with a period that is
inversely proportional to the device thickness.
The laser structure we have examined is represented in Fig. 1 and
consists of three layers of InGaAs quantum dots each of which is grown in a
matrix of GaAs (10 nm thick). These are themselves grown in Al0.3Ga0.7As,
and together comprise the waveguide core of the device. Atomic force
microscopy (AFM) studies indicate the dots are lens like in shape, are 2.2
nm high and 36 nm in diameter with a dot density of 4.5x1010 cm -2.
FIG. 3. Spectra of the device of Fig. 2 taken at 1.4 and 1.53Ith and at a temperature of
280 K. The larger wavelength range shows the presence of a second group of lasing
modes at higher energies. The two spectra are offset on the vertical scale.
FIG. 2.a Quantum-dot laser spectra taken at drive currents of 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.43Ith
and a temperature of 280 K for a 50 mm wide, 1500 mm long oxide isolated stripe
device. The spectra have been offset on the vertical scale for ease of comparison ~higher
current have larger offsets!. The spectra exhibit groups of longitudinal modes separated
by approximately 1nm intervals in addition to the normal longitudinal modes shown in
the magnified section of the 1.33Ith spectrum in the inset.
Fig 2.b. Fourier transforms of the data in (a) plotted in terms of wave number. The
spectra are offset on the vertical scale for clarity (increasing offsets for higher currents).
length. The length dependence of any other periodicity within the spectrum
also then becomes apparent. In Fig. 4, we have plotted the Fourier transform
of the wave-number spectrum of a 1500 mm long, 260 mm thick device
operated at 23Ith and at a temperature of 150 K.
The low temperature allows us to drive the device well above
threshold without exciting the higher energy states observed in Fig. 3. In the
upper trace, which is the lower trace amplified by a factor of 20, a feature
exists at both the device length (B1) and twice the device length (B2). The
largest feature (A1), which is readily apparent in the trace that has not been
amplified, corresponds to a length of250 mm, with another feature (A2),
apparent in the amplified trace, at 500 mm. Similar measurements taken on
the other devices of different thickness and cavity length are summarized in
Table I. The features apparent in the Fourier transform spectra, which
represent the periodicity present in the measured spectra, show a correlation
with the thickness
These results indicate that the dominant mechanism leading to the
regular modulation of the emission spectra in these quantum-dot lasers is
related to the device thickness, although there are some additional features
present in some of the measured spectra that do not appear to be related to
the cavity length or thickness. It may be that in quantum-dot devices where
substrate effects are suppressed that other mechanisms cause regular or
quasiregular mode distributions.
FIG. 3. Spectra of the device of Fig. 2 taken at 1.4 and 1.53Ith and at a temperature of
280 K. The larger wavelength range shows the presence of a second group of lasing
modes at higher energies. The two spectra are offset on the vertical scale.
Fig. 1: Threshold current density of 2 samples with different numbers of quantum dot
layers as function of the inverse cavity length. Values determined in pulsed operation for
100 µm wide broad area lasers at 20 °C.
Due to the improved gain by 6 dot layers with an average dot density
per layer of about 1x1011 cm-2 and the low internal absorption high
performance short cavity devices could be realized using high reflection
facet coatings (83% for front and 95% for backside facets, respectively). 400
µm long devices exhibit threshold currents as low as 6 mA and more than 5
mW output power at 30 mA Emission from the fundamental dot states was
CONCLUSION
Though QD lasers show immense potential for superior device
performances, there are still some significant problems associated with the
control of emission wavelengths reproducibilty of the dots,high temperature
reliability and long term stablity of the dots.The current challenge is to
match and surpass the performance of the quantum well lasers.There is still
need for the development of QD strength of lasing around 1.55 micrometre
,which is a principal wavelength in fibre optic communications.This would
give QD lasers a chance to move into application such as ultrafast optical
data transfer .A key aspect of QD production challenge will be to improve
our control over the dot distribution produced in the self assembly process
.Reliable continuous wave room temperature operation of QD lasers has
already been reported; structure improvements are required to get the
operation characteristics more desirable,especially the elimination of several
mechanisms that have a detrimental effect at room temperature.
From a bird’s eyeview ,the research on QD lasers is still newly
emerging from its beginning stages .Several promient group of researchers
around the world are all going down their own avenues ,grappling with a
portion of the overall problem ,identifying and overcoming obstacles one by
one individually .This is not surprising ,considering the research on QD
lasers , as opposed to somewhat more well established research on basic
QD’s themselves began to hit the stage truly only around 1995-1996.Still
consideing the efforts and the emergence of well defined directions ,there
seems to be hope that the field will settle down and become established .If
the collective effort succeeds in bettering the performance of quantum well
lasers ,which it might ,then QD lasers can finally be up there along with the
MOSFET,quantum well lasers and monolithic integration technology.
REFERENCES
Long wavelength quantum dot lasers in Journal of
materials science: Materials in electronics January 2002
1.3 micro metre QD lasers with improved high temperature
properties by F.Klopfs and R.Krebs
Spectral analysis of InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot lasers by
P.M.Smowton in Journal of Applied physics letters
Volume 75,October 1999
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