Silicon nitride is a promising wave-guiding material for integrated photonics applications with a wide transparency bandwidth from visible to mid-infrared, with a superior performance in fiber-coupling and propagation losses, more tolerant fabrication process to the structure parameters variation and compatible with the CMOS technology. Directional coupler (DC) is very popular for realizing beam splitter because of its structural simplicity and no excess loss intrinsically. Here, a conventional silicon nitride directional coupler, three-dimensional vertical coupler, and grating waveguide assisted coupler are designed and fabricated, and compared with each other. A grating waveguide based coupler with a period of 300 nm and coupling length of 26 um, can realize a wideband 3-dB splitter for the wavelength in the range from 1540 to 1620 nm, for a transverse electric (TE) polarized wave. With further optimization of the grating period and duty cycle, the device performance can be further improved with a wider bandwidth.
Low threshold current BeZnCdSe single quantum-well (SQW) laser diodes (LDs) have been developed. The waveguide
was formed of a ridge structure with etching away the top p-type BeMgZnSe/ZnSe:N short-period superlattice cladding
layer, and then covered with a thick SiO2 layer and planarized with chemical-mechanical polishing and reactive ion
etching process. Three type LDs with different SQW thickness and Cd content were developed and compared at varying
waveguide width and length. Lasing wavelength of 535, 563, and 567 nm were realized respectively, at room-temperature
continuous-wave condition with the laser cavity formed by the cleaved waveguide facets coated with high-reflectivity
dielectric films. Compared with our previously developed gain-guided diode structure for a 5-μm-wide, 800-
μm-long gain-guided green laser with a threshold current and voltage of 68 mA and 10.4 V, a 535-nm green laser with 7-
nm-thick SQW can realize a threshold current and voltage of 7.07 mA and 7.89 V, respectively, for a cavity width of 4
μm and length of 300 μm. A 563-nm yellow LD with 4-nm-thick SQW was also developed with 7.4-mA and 8.48-V
threshold current and voltage for a 3-μm-wide, 300-μm-long cavity. A 567-nm yellow LD with 7-nm-thick SQW can
achieve a threshold current and voltage of 10.8 mA and 8.4 V, respectively, for a cavity length of 300 μm and width of 7
μm. The threshold current and voltage were decreased due to the reinforced confinement of carriers in cavities. The
device performance can be significantly improved with much lower power consumption. The threshold current and
power consumption is also sufficiently low compared with that of InGaN/GaN green LDs, which will benefit the
potential application for ZnSe-based LDs as light sources in full-color display as well as some biomedical devices.
A ZnSe/BeTe p-grading superlattice (p-GSL) with a low voltage drop is reported for BeZnCdSe quantum well laser diode (LD) in green-yellow visible range. A p-GSL is inserted between a p+-BeTe for ohmic contact layer and a ZnSe/BeMgZnSe p-cladding layer in a LD, for an efficient hole injection in spite of a large potential barrier height of ~0.8 eV between these layers. A GSL design has hence a great impact on a threshold voltage of lasing and thus reliability in LDs. Simple p-n junction devices with various GSL designs are fabricated, where a p-n junction is formed between p-ZnSe and a n-GaAs. In a p-GSL where a pair of ZnSe/BeTe is repeated, BeTe thickness increases with fixed monolayer (ML) step, while ZnSe thickness decreases with the same step when next pair of ZnSe/BeTe is grown. While a grading of 1 ML step is used in the previous LDs, the new GSL design with smaller grading step of 0.5 ML gives a 2 V lower voltage at 200 A/cm2 current injection. Then, LDs characteristics are compared with the GSL of new and old designs, while other layers in LDs are kept nearly identical, which is confirmed by a similar threshold current of ~80 mA and an emission wavelength at ~540 nm in these LDs. The LD with the new GSL design showed a lower threshold voltage for a lasing as well as a higher output power due to a lower device heating.
The authors report the study of thermal annealing (TA) effects on the intersubband transitions (ISB-T) properties in (CdS/ZnSe)/BeTe and CdS/ZnSe multiple quantum wells (MQWs). The samples were grown on (001)-GaAs substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. With the increase of annealing temperature, the ISB-T shifts to longer wavelength in (CdS/ZnSe)/BeTe MQWs, but to short wavelength in CdS/ZnSe MQWs. The ISB absorption vanishes at the annealing temperature of 270 °C for CdS/ZnSe QWs while survives to up to 440 °C for (CdS/ZnSe)/BeTe QWs. For (CdS/ZnSe)/BeTe MQWs after 20 minutes of TA, absorption wavelength and intensity become stable. For CdS/ZnSe MQWs, however we observed a blue shift in wavelength accompanied by a decrease of intensity after 45 minutes of TA. Photo-induced ISB-T measurements indicate that the disappearance of ISB absorption results from the loss of free-carriers in the well layers. ω/2θ scan and two-dimensional reciprocal space mapping (2DRSM)) measurements of X-ray diffraction (XRD) indicate that a built-up of tensile strain and interdiffusion at interfacial region in the annealed (CdS/ZnSe)/BeTe heterostructrues. 2DRSM also shows the enhanced structural relaxation in CdS/ZnSe MQWs. Based on the XRD analysis, the effects of TA on the ISB-T in (CdS/ZnSe)/BeTe and CdS/ZnSe MQWs are explained.
We have demonstrated continuous wave operation of BeZnCdSe quantum well laser diodes at room temperature in the
green to yellow spectrum range. The laser diodes structures were grown by molecular beam epitaxy. To overcome low
doping ability of a p-cladding layer materials of BeMgZnSe, a short-period superlattice of BeMgZnSe/ZnSe:N was
employed. High-power lasing over 50mW at a peak wavelength of 536 nm was achieved. By employing highly strained
BeZnCdSe quantum wells, continuous wave lasing up to 570 nm has been also achieved. The threshold current density
of 20-μm-wide lasers was found to be sufficiently low (less than 0.85 kA/cm2) in the wavelength range of 545 nm to 570
nm.
Ultrafast all-optical switch based on intersubband transitions in InGaAs/AlAs/AlAsSb quantum well is described.
Because of very fast intra-band relaxation in conduction band, we can obtain very fast response of around 1ps. The
operation principles and characteristics as an absorption saturation type device are described. Also described is the
operation as an all-optical phase modulator. With Mach-Zehnder interferometer configuration, error free all-optical
demultiplexing operation from 160-Gb/s to 40-Gb/s was achieved.
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