Design, Analysis, and Characterization of Indirectly-pumped Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers

Quantum cascade laser (QCL), as a unipolar semiconductor laser based on intersubband transitions in quantum wells, covers a large portion of the Mid and Far Infrared electromagnetic spectrum. The frequency of the optical transition can be determined by engineering the layer sequence of the heterostructure. The focus of this work is on Terahertz (THz) frequency range (frequency of 1 - 10 THz and photon energy of ~ 4 - 40 meV), which is lacking of high power, coherent, and efficient narrowband radiation sources. THz QCL, demonstrated in 2002, as a perfect candidate of coherent THz source, is still suffering from the empirical operating temperature limiting factor of T ≈ ħω/kB, which allows this source to work only under a cryogenic system. Most of high performance THz QCLs, including the world record design which lased up to ~ 200 K, are based on a resonant phonon (RP) scheme, whose population inversion is always less than 50%. The indirectly-pumped (IDP) QCL, nicely implemented in MIR frequency, starts to be a good candidate to overcome the aforementioned limiting factor of RP-QCL. A rate equation (RE) formalism, which includes both coherent and incoherent transport process, will be introduced to model the carrier transport of all presented structures in this thesis. The second order tunneling which employed the intrasubband roughness and impurity scattering, was implemented in our model to nicely predict the behavior of the QCL designs. This model, which is easy to implement and fast to calculate, could help us to engineer the electron wavefunctions of the structure with optimization tools. We developed a new design scheme which employs the phonon scattering mechanism for both injecting carrier to the upper lasing state and extracting carrier from lower lasing state. Since there is no injection/extraction state to be in resonance with lasing states, this simple design scheme does not suffer from broadening due to the tunneling. Finally, three different THz IDP-QCLs, based on phonon-photon-phonon (3P) scheme were designed, grown, fabricated, and characterized. The performance of those structures in terms of operating temperature, threshold current density, maximum current density, output optical power, lasing frequency, differential resistance at threshold, intermediate resonant current before threshold, and kBT/ħω factor will be compared. We could improve the kBT/ħω factor of the 3P-QCL design from 0.9 in first iteration to 1.3 and the output optical power of the structure from 0.9 mW in first design to 3.4 mW. The performance of the structure in terms of intermediate resonant current and the change in differential resistance at threshold was improved

Direct Nanoscale Imaging of Evolving Electric Field Domains in Quantum Structures

The external performance of quantum optoelectronic devices is governed by the spatial profiles of electrons and potentials within the active regions of these devices. For example, in quantum cascade lasers (QCLs), the electric field domain (EFD) hypothesis posits that the potential distribution might be simultaneously spatially nonuniform and temporally unstable. Unfortunately, there exists no prior means of probing the inner potential profile directly. Here we report the nanoscale measured electric potential distribution inside operating QCLs by using scanning voltage microscopy at a cryogenic temperature. We prove that, per the EFD hypothesis, the multi-quantum-well active region is indeed divided into multiple sections having distinctly different electric fields. The electric field across these serially-stacked quantum cascade modules does not continuously increase in proportion to gradual increases in the applied device bias, but rather hops between discrete values that are related to tunneling resonances. We also report the evolution of EFDs, finding that an incremental change in device bias leads to a hopping-style shift in the EFD boundary – the higher electric field domain expands at least one module each step at the expense of the lower field domain within the active region.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaCanadian Foundation for InnovationCMC Microsystems (Firm)Ontario Research Foundatio

Effect of interface roughness scattering on performance of indirectly pumped terahertz quantum cascade lasers

The effect of interface roughness scattering on performance of indirectly-pumped terahertz quantum cascade lasers is studied and a dual-barrier structure is proposed to improve its performance in terms of threshold current density and operating temperature.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Effect of interface roughness scattering on performance of indirectly pumped terahertz quantum cascade lasers

The effect of interface roughness scattering on performance of indirectly-pumped terahertz quantum cascade lasers is studied and a dual-barrier structure is proposed to improve its performance in terms of threshold current density and operating temperature.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Effects of interface roughness scattering on device performance of indirectly pumped terahertz quantum cascade lasers

The impacts of interface roughness (IR) scattering on device performance of indirectly-pumped (IDP) terahertz quantum cascade lasers are studied. Three different active region designs with almost the same lasing frequency at threshold and comparable oscillator strength are experimentally investigated and the measurement data are analyzed and compared with numerical simulation. The simulation results show that all structures suffer from the detrimental effect of intersubband roughness scattering in terms of threshold current density, and probably operating temperature. The intrasubband IR scattering time could also to be a limiting factor in the IDP structures due to the employed high energetic barrier.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Effects of interface roughness scattering on device performance of indirectly pumped terahertz quantum cascade lasers

The impacts of interface roughness (IR) scattering on device performance of indirectly-pumped (IDP) terahertz quantum cascade lasers are studied. Three different active region designs with almost the same lasing frequency at threshold and comparable oscillator strength are experimentally investigated and the measurement data are analyzed and compared with numerical simulation. The simulation results show that all structures suffer from the detrimental effect of intersubband roughness scattering in terms of threshold current density, and probably operating temperature. The intrasubband IR scattering time could also to be a limiting factor in the IDP structures due to the employed high energetic barrier.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye