| 1. |
- Bergmann, Michael Alexander, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Towards ultraviolet and blue microcavity lasers
- 2018
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Ingår i: Northen Optics and Photonics conference. - 9789163964886 ; 2018
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The development of III-nitride-based (Al,Ga,In(N)) microcavity lasers is a challenging task. Significant progress in recent years has resulted in realizations of electrically pumped devices with optical output power in the mW-range and with threshold current densities below 20 kA/cm2. However, to become practical, the lifetime and power conversion efficiency of these devices must be improved. Among the challenges are achieving transverse optical mode confinement, highreflectivity mirrors and control over the resonator length. We will highlight our theoretical work on transverse optical mode confinement, emphasising the overwhelming risk of ending up with an optically anti-guided cavity, and its consequences such as very high optical losses that easily could double the threshold gain for lasing. We will show some anti-guided cavities with reasonable threshold gain and built-in modal discrimination. However, all anti-guided cavities are very sensitive to temperature effects and small structural changes in the cavity caused by fabrication imperfections. We have explored electrically conductive distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) in both AlN/GaN and ZnO/GaN. The AlN/GaN DBRs were grown with different strain-compensating interlayers, and the DBR without interlayers had the lowest vertical resistivity with a specific series resistance of 0.044 cmfor eight DBRpairs. In the ZnO/GaN DBR, the measured resistance was dominated by lateral and contact contributions, setting a lower measurable limit of ~10 for three DBR-pairs. Numerical simulations show the importance of having in-plane strained layers in the ZnO/GaN DBR, since that leads to cancellation of the spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization. This results in a dramatically reduced vertical resistance, potentially three orders of magnitude lower than what could be measured. cm An alternative to an epitaxially grown DBR is a dielectric DBR, which offers high reflectivity over a broader wavelength range, relaxing the requirements on resonator length control. To deposit a dielectric DBR on the bottom side of the cavity, the sample must first be bonded to a carrier wafer before the substrate can be removed. We used thermocompression gold-gold bonding to successfully bond the laser structure to a Si carrier wafer. The subsequent substrate removal is a challenging process due to the chemical inertness of the III-nitride-based materials. A doping-dependent electrochemical etch technique was used, which allows for the selective removal of a sacrificial (n-doped) layer between the cavity and the substrate. This resulted in nm-precise cavity lift-off with a low root-mean-square surface roughness down to 0.3 nm. Thus, the process is suitable for the fabrication of high-quality optical devices such as microcavity lasers. In addition, the technique offers a new alternative to create III-nitridebased optical resonators, mechanical resonators, thin film LEDs and transistors.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Haglund, Åsa, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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Progress and challenges in electrically pumped GaN-based VCSELs
- 2016
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Ingår i: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. - : SPIE. - 0277-786X .- 1996-756X. ; 9892
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) is an established optical source in short-distance optical communication links, computer mice and tailored infrared power heating systems. Its low power consumption, easy integration into two-dimensional arrays, and low-cost manufacturing also make this type of semiconductor laser suitable for application in areas such as high-resolution printing, medical applications, and general lighting. However, these applications require emission wavelengths in the blue-UV instead of the established infrared regime, which can be achieved by using GaN-based instead of GaAs-based materials. The development of GaN-based VCSELs is challenging, but during recent years several groups have managed to demonstrate electrically pumped GaN-based VCSELs with close to 1 mW of optical output power and threshold current densities between 3-16 kA/cm2. The performance is limited by challenges such as achieving high-reflectivity mirrors, vertical and lateral carrier confinement, efficient lateral current spreading, accurate cavity length control and lateral optical mode confinement. This paper summarizes different strategies to solve these issues in electrically pumped GaN-VCSELs together with state-of-the-art results. We will highlight our work on combined transverse current and optical mode confinement, where we show that many structures used for current confinement result in unintentionally optically anti-guided resonators. Such resonators can have a very high optical loss, which easily doubles the threshold gain for lasing. We will also present an alternative to the use of distributed Bragg reflectors as high-reflectivity mirrors, namely TiO2/air high contrast gratings (HCGs). Fabricated HCGs of this type show a high reflectivity (>95%) over a 25 nm wavelength span.
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| 4. |
- Hashemi, Seyed Ehsan, 1986, et al.
(författare)
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Analysis of structurally sensitive loss in GaN-based VCSEL cavities and its effect on modal discrimination
- 2014
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Ingår i: Optics Express. - 1094-4087 .- 1094-4087. ; 22:1, s. 411-426
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Lateral loss causes optical energy to leave the laser cavity in the transverse, lateral, direction, and is sometimes neglected to simplify the numerical simulations. However, in contrast to outcoupling and absorption losses, we show that the lateral loss can change drastically with only nanometer-sized changes of the cavity structure, from being virtually zero to becoming the major source of cavity loss, since the cavity becomes antiguiding. This can be explained as the opening of a channel of efficient resonant lateral leakage of optical power at a certain oblique propagation angle. A number of different realizations of current apertures and top mirror designs in GaN-based VCSEL cavities, which have been suggested for realization of microcavity lasers emitting in the blue wavelength range, are simulated. Many of these are shown to lead to unintentional antiguiding, which can more than double the threshold gain for lasing. Notably, for strong enough antiguiding the resonant lateral leakage decreases so that the threshold gain values might again be tolerable. This regime has been suggested for robust single-mode operation since earlier predictions, building on analogies with slab waveguides, hinted at a very strong suppression of higher order modes. However, our simulations indicate that for the VCSEL cavities the derived formulas grossly overestimate the modal discrimination.
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| 5. |
- Hashemi, Seyed Ehsan, 1986, et al.
(författare)
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Engineering the Lateral Optical Guiding in Gallium Nitride (GaN)-based Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) Cavities to Reach the Lowest Threshold Gain
- 2013
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Ingår i: Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. - 1347-4065 .- 0021-4922. ; 52:8 PART 2, s. 08JG04 -
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In order to improve the current injection in GaN-based blue vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) a dielectric aperture is generally used in combination with an indium–tin-oxide (ITO) layer on the top intracavity p-contact layer. The most straightforward way to realize this introduces a depression of the structure near the optical axis and we show, by using a two-dimensional (2D) effective index method and a three-dimensional (3D) coupled-cavity beam propagation method, that this typically results in optically anti-guided structures with associated high optical losses and thus very high threshold gains. Remarkably, the threshold gain reduces with increased negative guiding, which is due to improved lateral confinement and reduction of lateral leakage. Still, moderately positively guided designs should be preferred to avoid the detrimental effect of lateral leakage and high diffraction loss. To ensure positive index guiding, we propose to planarize the structure or introduce an elevation near the optical axis by additional processing, with an associated reduction in threshold material gain from 6000 to 2000 cm-1 for the studied structures.
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| 6. |
- Hashemi, Seyed Ehsan, 1986, et al.
(författare)
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Engineering the transverse optical guiding in GaN-based VCSELs to avoid detrimental optical loss
- 2012
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Ingår i: International Workshop on Nitride Semiconductors 2012, October 14-19, 2012, Sapporo, Japan, p. ThP-OD-33.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In order to improve the current injection in GaN-based blue vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) a dielectric aperture is generally used in combination with an indium-tin-oxide (ITO) layer on the top intracavity p-contact layer. The most straightforward way to realize this introduces a depression of the structure near the optical axis and we show, by using a 2D effective index method and a 3D coupled-cavity beam propagation method, that this typically results in optically anti-guided structures with associated high optical losses and thus very high threshold gains. Remarkably, the threshold gain reduces with increased negative guiding, which is due to improved lateral confinement and reduction of lateral leakage. Still, moderately positively guided designs should be preferred to avoid the detrimental effect of lateral leakage and high diffraction loss. To ensure positive index guiding, we propose to planarize the structure or introduce an elevation near the optical axis by additional processing, with an associated reduction in threshold material gain from 6000 cm-1 to 2000 cm-1 for the studied structures.
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| 7. |
- Hashemi, Seyed Ehsan, 1986, et al.
(författare)
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Triggering of guiding and antiguiding effects in GaN-based VCSELs
- 2014
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Ingår i: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. - : SPIE. - 0277-786X .- 1996-756X. ; 9001
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We show numerically that many recently proposed GaN-based VCSEL cavities, with DBR mirrors deposited onto the current aperture, balance dangerously close to the border between the guided and antiguided regime. A guided cavity is often preferred because of its lower optical loss, but a strongly antiguided cavity offers built-in modal discrimination favoring single fundamental mode operation. We show that very small changes in the VCSEL structure are sufficient to strongly change the guiding character of the VCSEL cavity, and that thermal lensing caused by device self-heating under operation can dramatically reduce the optical loss but not the modal discrimination in the antiguided cavities.
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