Temperature performance of the edge emitting transistor laser

Abstract

The characteristic temperature (T0) of the edge emitting transistor laser (TL) is studied numerically. For the deep-ridge TL, the common base (CB) mode characteristic temperature (T0,CB) is a lot lower than the common emitter (CE) mode characteristic temperature (T0,CE), which is comparable to a conventional laser. This is resulted from the increase of the emitter to base current gain with the base current, which amplifies the increase of the CB threshold current with temperature. For the shallow-ridge TL, the T0,CE is found to be also rather low and is only slightly higher than the T0,CB. This can be attributed to the large fraction of electron current in the total base current, which is related to the large thickness of base layer and the insertion of quantum wells in the TL.