Thermal effects in quantum cascade lasers at λ∼4.6 μm under pulsed and continuous-wave modes

Abstract

The thermal effects in InGaAs/InAlAs quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) emitting at λ∼4.6 μm under pulsed and continuous-wave (CW) modes using a three-dimensional (3D) heat dissipation model were investigated. Based on the experimentally measured results, the thermal characteristics were theoretically analyzed for various device and heatsinking structures. Also, the heat accumulation effects and dissipation processes were studied in detail under pulsed operation. High cooling efficiencies were achieved by a relatively fast heat diffusion rate from the active core region for the epilayer-down bonded single ridge waveguide buried heterostructure (BH) with a thick electroplated Au around the laser ridge. A further improvement was made by the use of InP embedding layer. In CW mode, the thermal conductance (G th) value of 445 W/(K cm2) at 298 K was obtained for the epilayer-down bonded double-channel ridge waveguide QCL with AlN submount, which indicates a reasonable consistency with the available experimental data. By optimizing the device and heatsinking structures, the G th was improved to a high value of 673 W/(K cm2) at 298 K for the epilayer-down bonded single ridge waveguide BH QCL with InP embedding layer on diamond submount in CW mode.