Room Temperature CW Research Articles

Fundamental mode emission in tapered quantum cascade lasers for high brightness

Currently, the highest power quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) include (i) an efficient active region design, which minimizes the energy fraction transferred into heat, (ii) a relatively large number (40) of cascades, which increases the mode confinement factor, Γ, and (iii) narrow buried-heterostructure waveguides, which efficiently cool the active region through efficient lateral heat flow. This combination allows watt-level continuous wave (cw) emission powers at room temperature. Moreover, narrow waveguides favor the fundamental TM00 lateral mode, resulting in a nearly Gaussian beam. To the extent that power efficiency is already largely optimized, power scaling in narrow-stripe QCLs is only possible through increasing the laser length, which is limited by the needs for robust construction and transparent antireflection coatings. Broad-area (BA) QCLs with a small number of cascades can also deliver watt-level cw powers at room temperature, profiting from the enhanced vertical heat flow. Power can be scaled for these lasers also via the laser width and is nearly unlimited. The usual drawback of the BA lasers is poor beam quality. We discuss the use of tapered QCLs and the first demonstration of room temperature cw operation of the BA QCL in fundamental TM00 mode. A stable and reproducible transverse optical mode is achieved using a double-taper waveguide geometry. The laser emits at 4.6 μm and has a demonstrated room temperature cw power of 100 mW.

Efficient continuous wave accelerating structure for ion beams

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams driver linac was designed for acceleration of multiple-charge-state beams after the stripping at ion beam energies of 17 to $20\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}\mathrm{/u}$ depending on the ion species. The linac includes a 180\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{} achromatic bend to select multiple charge states for further acceleration and to dump unwanted charge states after the first 45\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{} magnet. Two rf rebunchers between the stripper and the linac segment 2 (LS2) are required to minimize the effective emittance growth of the multiple-charge-state beams and provide matching to the LS2. Recent studies have shown that the best choice for these two rebunchers is a room-temperature (RT) accelerating structure capable of providing robust operation in the presence of the stripped heavy ion beam contaminants. The latter can result in uncontrolled losses of contaminant ions after the passage off the stripper. Therefore, using a superconducting (SC) rebuncher after the stripper is not rational due to possible contamination and performance degradation of SC cavities over a long period of operation. For the beam bunching in the energy range from 13 to $22\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}\mathrm{/u}$, two 161 MHz rebunchers based on interdigital H-type (IH) structure were developed, built, installed and commissioned with beam at the FRIB linac. This is the first experimental demonstration for application of a cw RT drift tube accelerating structure in this energy range.

Low Threshold Quantum Dot Lasers Directly Grown on Unpatterned Quasi-Nominal (001) Si

We report electrically pumped, continuous-wave (cw) InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) lasers directly grown on quasi-nominal Si (001) substrates with offcut angle as small as 0.4°. No GaP, Ge buffer layers or substrate patterning is required. An anti-phase boundary free epitaxial GaAs film was grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) with a low threading dislocation density of 3 × 107 cm−2. Room-temperature cw lasing at ∼1.3 μm has been achieved, with a minimum threshold current density of 34.6 A/cm2 per layer, a maximum operating temperature of 80 °C, and a maximum single facet output power of 52 mW. A comparison of various monolithic III-V hetero-epitaxy on Si solutions is presented. Direct growth on unpatterned quasi-nominal (001) Si may yield the best material quality at the lowest lifecycle cost.

Single-Mode Fabry-Pérot Quantum Cascade Lasers at λ~10.5 μm

In this paper, we report a single-mode Fabry-Pérot long wave infrared quantum cascade lasers based on the double phonon resonance active region design. For room temperature CW operation, the wafer with 35 stages was processed into buried heterostructure lasers. For a 4 mm long and 13 μm wide laser with high-reflectivity (HR) coating on the rear facet, continuous wave output power of 43 mW at 288 K and 5 mW at 303 K is obtained with threshold current densities of 2.17 and 2.7 kA/cm2. The lasing wavelength is around 10.5 μm. Single mode emission was observed for this particular device over the whole investigated current and temperature range.

Power scaling in quantum cascade lasers using broad-area stripes with reduced cascade number

For many applications, optical emission power of many watts in the midinfrared part of the optical spectrum is required. Quantum cascade lasers for these applications typically contain 30 to 40 cascades and have laser ridge widths of about 10 μm. These lasers cannot, however, be readily scaled up in power. This paper demonstrates a path for further power scaling that is based on broad stripes with fewer than 15 cascades. Although the confinement factor Γ for this design approach is lower than for designs with 30 to 40 cascades, the ability to efficiently extract heat from the top and bottom of the lasers more than offsets the Γ disadvantage. We expect this approach to deliver tens of watts of power with high beam quality leading to high brilliance. The paper discusses the design approach, thermal conduction considerations, and confinement factor. Room temperature cw operation of broad-area lasers based on this approach is demonstrated and described.

Study and development of CW room temperature rebuncher for SARAF accelerator

The SARAF 176 MHz accelerator is designed to provide CW proton/deuteron beams up to 5 mA current and 40 MeV accelerated ion energy. Phase I of SARAF (up to 4–5 MeV) has been installed, commissioned, and is available for experimental work. Phase II of SARAF is currently in the design and first prototyping stage and will contain longer MEBT with three rebunchers and four cryomodules, each consisting of SC HWRs and solenoids. Phase II MEBT line is designed to follow a 1.3 MeV/u RFQ, is 4.5 m long, and contains three 176 MHz rebunchers providing a field integral of 105 kV. Different rebuncher configurations have been studied in order to minimize the RF losses and maximize the shunt impedance. Different apertures have also been tested with the 40 mm diameter required by beam dynamics. The simulations were done using CST Microwave Studio. CEA leads the design for SARAF phase II linac including the MEBT rebunchers and has studied a mixed solid copper and Cu plated stainless steel, 3-gap cavity. SNRC is developing a 4-gap OFHC copper rebuncher as a risk reduction. Both designs are presented and discussed in the paper.

Electrically pumped continuous-wave 1.3 µm InAs/GaAs quantum dot lasers monolithically grown on on-axis Si (001) substrates.

We report on the first electrically pumped continuous-wave (cw) InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) lasers monolithically grown on on-axis Si (001) substrates without any intermediate buffer layers. A 400 nm antiphase boundary (APB) free epitaxial GaAs film with a small root-mean-square (RMS) surface roughness of 0.86 nm was first deposited on a 300 mm standard industry-compatible on-axis Si (001) substrate by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The QD laser structure was then grown on this APB-free GaAs/Si (001) virtual substrate by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Room-temperature cw lasing at ~1.3 µm has been achieved with a threshold current density of 425 A/cm2 and single facet output power of 43 mW. Under pulsed operation, lasing operation up to 102 °C has been realized, with a threshold current density of 250 A/cm2 and single facet output power exceeding 130 mW at room temperature.

GaN-based vertical cavity surface emitting lasers with periodic gain structures

We have achieved room-temperature CW operations of GaN-based vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) with periodic gain structures (PGSs). The PGS-VCSEL consisted of 4.5λ-thick optical cavity length and two GaInN 5-quantum-well (QW) active regions separated with a Mg-doped GaN intermediate layer. The uniform carrier injection into the two active regions was also investigated using light-emitting diodes (LEDs). It is found that the use of an optimum Mg concentration in the intermediate layers improves the uniform carrier injection in the two active regions. From these results, we realized the CW operation of VCSELs with PGSs grown on AlInN/GaN distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). The VCSEL under CW operation showed a threshold current density of 16.5 kA/cm2 and its operation wavelength was 409.9 nm.

Development of Surface Grating Distributed Feedback Quantum Cascade Laser for High Output Power and Low Threshold Current Density

We report on the room-temperature cw operation of a surface grating distributed feedback (DFB) quantum cascade laser (QCL) at λ ∼4.7 μm. Both grating design and material optimization are used to decrease the threshold current density and to increase the output power. For a high-reflectivity-coated 13-μm-wide and 4-mm-long laser, high wall-plug efficiency of 6% is obtained at 20°C from a single facet producing over 1 W of cw output power. The threshold current density of DFB QCL is as low as 1.13 kA/cm2 at 10°C and 1.34 kA/cm2 at 30°C in cw mode. Stable single-mode emission with a side-mode suppression ratio of about 30 dB is observed in the working temperature range of 20–50°C.

Demonstration of a cw room temperature mid-IR microlaser.

We report a demonstration of the first continuous-wave (cw) mid-IR microlaser operating at room temperature (RT). Our whispering-gallery-mode microlaser-operating at 2.71μm-is based on a heavily erbium-doped high-Q ZBLAN microsphere optically pumped by a 980nm diode laser; with a threshold pump power of <150 μW.

Two‐color lasing in a coupled multilayer cavity with InAs quantum dots by optical pumping

AbstractTwo‐color lasing in a GaAs/AlAs coupled multilayer cavity has been studied for a novel type of terahertz emitting devices. In the structure, two cavity layers based on GaAs were connected by the intermediate GaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflector multilayer and three layers of self‐assembled InAs quantum dots (QDs) were inserted only in the top‐side cavity layer as optical gain materials. The broadened QD emissions around 1.25 µm are very useful to realize the optical gain because they could cover the wide range of the mode frequency difference. Two mode emissions with an optical frequency difference of 3.2 THz were successfully demonstrated under room temperature cw operation by optical pumping. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Growth of flat p‐GaN contact layer by pulse flow method for high light‐extraction AlGaN deep‐UV LEDs with Al‐based electrode

AbstractImprovement of light extraction efficiency (LEE) is strongly demanded in an AlGaN‐based deep ultraviolet (DUV) light‐emitting diode (LED), because the LEE of AlGaN DUV LED is low (usually below 10%) due to the light absorption at around p‐GaN contact layer and p‐type electrode. We have demonstrated improvement of LEE of AlGaN DUV LEDs by using thin p‐GaN contact layer and using Al‐based high‐reflectivity p‐electrode. It was difficult to grow thin and flat p‐type GaN layers with heavy Mg‐doping on high‐Al‐content AlGaN layers. We demonstrated the growth of flat and thin p‐GaN contact layer by using ‘an NH3 pulse‐flow growth method’. We investigated the growth conditions for thin p‐GaN contact layer with high‐hole‐concentration using the NH3 pulse‐flow growth method. The surface roughness of the p‐GaN layer on high‐Al‐content p‐AlGaN was markedly improved by using an NH3 pulse‐flow growth method. We fabricated 250 nm‐band AlGaN quantum well (QW) DUV LEDs with thin p‐GaN contact layers grown by an NH3 pulse‐flow growth method. We observed single‐peaked operation spectrum for the 251 nm AlGaN MQW LED. The maximum output power and external quantum efficiencies (EQE) were 17.7 mW and 1.32%, respectively, measured under room temperature cw operation. (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Characteristics of epitaxial lateral overgrowth AlN templates on (111)Si substrates for AlGaN deep‐UV LEDs fabricated on different direction stripe patterns

AbstractWe investigated the characteristics of epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) AlN templates fabricated on Si substrates which are applicable to AlGaN‐based deep ultraviolet (DUV) light‐emitting diodes (LEDs). ELO‐AlN layers were grown on stripe‐patterned thin AlN seed‐layer directly deposited on (111)Si substrates by using an ‘NH3 pulsed‐flow multi‐layer (ML) growth’ technique. A 4 µm‐thick ELO‐AlN layer with stripe pattern along &lt;10‐10&gt; direction of AlN can be coalesced successfully. We achieved marked reduction of crack and threading dislocation density (TDD) in the ELO AlN layers. In fact, the (10‐12) full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the X‐ray diffraction ω‐scan rocking curves (XRCs) of ELO‐AlN template on Si substrate was reduced to be 980 arcsec. These results show that the combination of NH3 pulsed‐flow ML growth and ELO method is effective to fabricate high‐quality AlN templates on Si substrates. Moreover we fabricated 256‐278 nm AlGaN quantum well (QW) DUV LEDs on the low TDD ELO‐AlN templates on Si, and achieved single‐peak operations under room temperature (RT) cw current injection. The low cost AlGaN based DUV LEDs on Si substrates is expected to be integrated with Si based electric devices on the same chips. (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Gain and Losses and Room-Temperature Operation in Interband Cascade Lasers

Interband cascade laser structures with a different number of cascades and doping types and levels in the separate confinement and in the hole-injection regions were grown. The temperature dependence of the gain and loss coefficients was measured. Although the gain dropped appreciably with increasing temperature, the internal losses remained nearly constant. Internal losses as low as 4.8 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> were measured at room temperature in an optimized design. Internal quantum efficiency per cascade of 86% is achieved at 240 K. Room-temperature CW operation with a front facet output power of 42 mW was obtained in a 5-cascade structure with a 54% reduced size injection region. The laser operated at 3.8 μm.

Transmembrane Gate Movements in the Type II ATP-binding Cassette (ABC) Importer BtuCD-F during Nucleotide Cycle

ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters are ubiquitous integral membrane proteins that translocate substrates across cell membranes. The alternating access of their transmembrane domains to opposite sides of the membrane powered by the closure and reopening of the nucleotide binding domains is proposed to drive the translocation events. Despite clear structural similarities, evidence for considerable mechanistic diversity starts to accumulate within the importers subfamily. We present here a detailed study of the gating mechanism of a type II ABC importer, the BtuCD-F vitamin B(12) importer from Escherichia coli, elucidated by EPR spectroscopy. Distance changes at key positions in the translocation gates in the nucleotide-free, ATP- and ADP-bound conformations of the transporter were measured in detergent micelles and liposomes. The translocation gates of the BtuCD-F complex undergo conformational changes in line with a "two-state" alternating access model. We provide the first direct evidence that binding of ATP drives the gates to an inward-facing conformation, in contrast to type I importers specific for maltose, molybdate, or methionine. Following ATP hydrolysis, the translocation gates restore to an apo-like conformation. In the presence of ATP, an excess of vitamin B(12) promotes the reopening of the gates toward the periplasm and the dislodgment of BtuF from the transporter. The EPR data allow a productive translocation cycle of the vitamin B(12) transporter to be modeled.

Room-Temperature Continuous-Wave Operation of a Tunable External Cavity Quantum Cascade Laser

A room-temperature cw operation of a tunable external cavity (EC) quantum cascade laser (QCL) at an emitting wavelength of 4.6 μm is presented. Strain-compensation combined with two-phonon resonance in an active region design promises low threshold current density. A very low threshold current density of 1.47kA/cm2 for an EC-QCL operated in cw mode is realized. Single-mode cw operation with a side-mode suppression ratio of 20 dB and a wide tuning range of over 110cm−1 are achieved. Moreover, an even wider tuning range of over 135cm−1 is obtained in pulsed mode at room temperature.

Room-temperature continuous wave operation of distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers with watt-level power output

We demonstrate surface-grating distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) with a watt-level power output at 4.75 μm. A device with a 5 mm cavity length exhibits an output power of 1.1 W in room-temperature cw operation. Single-mode operation with a side mode suppression ratio of 30 dB is obtained in the working temperature of 15–105 °C. A double-lobed far field with negligible beam steering is observed. The significance of this demonstration lies in its simplicity and readiness to be applied to standard QCL wafers with the promise of high-power performances.

Room-Temperature Continuous-Wave Operation of InGaN-Based Blue-Violet Laser Diodes with a Lifetime of 15.6 Hours

We report our recent progress of investigations on InGaN-based blue-violet laser diodes (LDs). The room-temperature (RT) cw operation lifetime of LDs has extended to longer than 15.6 h. The LD structure was grown on a c-plane free-standing (FS) GaN substrate by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The typical threshold current and voltage of LD under RT cw operation are 78 mA and 6.8 V, respectively. The experimental analysis of degradation of LD performances suggests that after aging treatment, the increase of series resistance and threshold current can be mainly attributed to the deterioration of p-type ohmic contact and the decrease of internal quantum efficiency of multiple quantum well (MQW), respectively.

Heat-fraction-limited CW Yb:YAG cryogenic solid-state laser with 100% photon slope efficiency

We report the demonstration of a heat-fraction-limited CW Yb:YAG laser operating near 77 K with output at 1029 nm, pumped with a diffraction-limited room-temperature CW Nd:YAG laser operating at 946 nm. With a 50% reflectivity outcoupler, the average threshold absorbed pump power was 18.8 mW and the average slope efficiency 91.9%, close to the heat-fraction limited value of 91.5%. Average optical to optical and photon slope efficiencies are 84% and 100% respectively. To the best of our knowledge this solid-state laser is the first to operate at the heat-fraction-limit and demonstrates record slope, photon slope and optical-optical efficiencies for optically-pumped solid-state lasers.

Jet-cooled infrared spectra of molecules and complexes with a cw mode-hop-free external-cavity QCL and a distributed-feedback QCL

The coupling of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) with an off-axis cavity enhanced absorption (CEA) spectrometer and an astigmatic multiple pass absorption (MPA) spectrometer are described in this paper. A continuous wave (cw) liquid nitrogen cooled distributed-feedback QCL at 5.7 μm and a cw room temperature mode-hop-free external-cavity QCL at 6.1 μm were employed as the light source. For the CEA spectrometer, the effects of mirror size and laser scan rate were evaluated. For the MPA spectrometer, a pair of astigmatic mirrors with a 55 cm mirror distance was aligned to the 366-pass configuration. The jet-cooled samples were generated using a homemade pulsed slit jet nozzle assembly. Two LabVIEW programs were written to automate and synchronize the timing of the laser scan, the pulsed slit jet molecular expansion, and the data acquisition. Infrared spectra of jet-cooled methyl lactate and the Ar–H2O complex and room temperature N2O and NH3 samples were measured using both the rapid scan and the wavelength modulation methods to evaluate the sensitivity and resolution of the CEA and MPA spectrometers. The combination of the MPA spectrometer with the external-cavity QCL using the rapid scan method was found to be the best suited combination to measure high resolution jet-cooled infrared spectra.