Carrier lifetime in erbium-doped GaN waveguide emitting in 1540 nm wavelength

We report the characteristics of an erbium-doped GaN semiconductor waveguide amplifier grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. We demonstrated that both 980 and 1480 nm optical pumping were efficient to create population inversion between the (4)I(13/2) and (4)I(15/2) energy levels. The carrier lifetime in the (4)I(13/2) energy band was measured to be approximately 1.5 ms in room temperature, which is slightly shorter than that in erbium-doped silica due to the interaction between the erbium ions and the semiconductor lattice structure. But it is significantly longer than the carrier lifetime in a typical semiconductor optical amplifier which is in the nanosecond regime. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3527089]