A novel current injected strained quantum well laser grown by MOVPE

Conventional long wavelength (1.3 and 1.55 μm emitting) GalnAsP alloy lasers suffer from two disadvantages. Firstly, carriers in the highest lying valence band have a heavy effective mass relative to carriers in the conduction band. This asymmetry leads to an increase in the carrier density required for lasing action to occur. Secondly, non-radia-tive recombination processes, such as Auger Recombination (AR) and Inter Valence Band Absorption (IVBA), which involve occupancy of the heavy-hole (HH) states, are thought to be significant in these materials. These again lead to higher thresholds and lower values ofT 0than might otherwise be the case. Recently, there has been considerable interest in the prospect of “engineering” the band structure of a 1.5 μm emitting device so as to overcome these problems. It has been reported that for a quantum well under biaxial compression, the light-hole/heavy-hole (LH/HH) degeneracy at the gamma point will be lifted such that the highest lying valence band will be LH-like in the in-plane direction. This should reduce both the effective mass asymmetry and the thermal occupancy of the HH states, lowering the threshold carrier density and reducing the AR and IVBA rates. This paper describes MOVPE growth and characterisation of the first 1.55 μm emitting current injected strained layer laser structure. The active region contains 3.5 nm thick strained quantum wells of Gao.3Ino.7As situated in the central region of a quaternary waveguide and grown on InP. TEM micrographs and x-ray data demonstrate that the lattice mismatch (approximately 1%) has been accommodated elastically, without the formation of misfit dislocations. Broad area lasers have been fabricated with lengths of 200–1200 μm and threshold current densities as low as 930 Acm-2 have been measured from the longer devices. Similar 1.55 μm emitting structures containing unstrained 7.5 nm thick Gao.47Ino.53As wells have also been grown and characterised for comparison. As yet, no significant improvement in either threshold current orT 0has been observed for strained lasers over unstrained devices.