Unidirectionally Emitting Quantum Cascade Microcavity Lasers with Patterned Contacts

We investigate unidirectionally emitting quantum cascade microcavity lasers with semicircle-patterned top contacts. We employ novel patterned top contacts while fabricating notched ellipse-shaped cavity lasers. We study experimentally the microcavity-structure-based quantum cascade (QC) laser material with a long infrared wavelength of ~10 μm. Then we characterize microcavity lasers with patterned contacts and compare them with nonpatterned ones and observe a lower operating injection threshold current as a consequence of this relatively straightforward technique, with the unidirectional emission feature being kept. We obtain a maximum light output peak power of 16 mW with unidirectional emission at a far-field divergence angle of ~7° at a full width of half maximum, while the patterned device shows low threshold even in the microcavity laser with a size of 150 μm. Furthermore, we also carry out a reliability test of the QC microcavity lasers with semicircle-patterned top contacts, and the testing results show no sudden failure or severe light-output-power drop during an operating time of thousand hours.