Super-gain nanostructure with self-assembled well-wire complex energy-band engineering for high performance of tunable laser diodes

Although traditional quantum-confined nanostructures e.g. regular quantum wells or quantum dots have achieved huge success in the field of semiconductor lasers for past decades, these traditional nanostructures are encountering the difficulty of enhancing device performance to a higher level due to their inherent gain bottleneck. In this paper, we are proposing a new super-gain nanostructure based on self-assembled well-wire complex energy-band engineering with InGaAs-based materials to break through the existing bottleneck. The nanostructure is constructed by utilizing the special strain-driven indium (In)-segregation and the growth orientation-dependent on-GaAs multi-atomic step effects to achieve the distinguished ultra-wide and uniform super-gain spectra. The structural details and its luminescence mechanism are investigated by multiple measurement means and theoretical modeling. The polarized gain spectra with the max fluctuation of <3 cm(-1) in 904 nm-998 nm for transverse electric (TE) mode and 904 nm-977 nm for transverse magnetic (TM) mode are simultaneously obtained with this nanostructure. It enables an ultra-low output power fluctuation of <0.7 dB and a nearly-constant threshold power throughout an ultra-wide wavelength range under a fixed injection level. It was difficult to realize these in the past. Therefore, the described super-gain nanostructure brings a brand-new chance of developing high performance of tunable laser diodes.

Automated summary

Despite the achievements of traditional quantum-confined nanostructures, they face difficulty in enhancing device performance due to inherent gain bottleneck. This paper proposes a novel super-gain nanostructure based on self-assembled well-wire complex energy-band engineering to overcome this bottleneck. The nanostructure utilizes strain-driven indium segregation and growth orientation-dependent multi-atomic step effects to achieve ultra-wide and uniform super-gain spectra.