1 Introduction
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Growth and Characterization of 2.xµm VECSELs on GaSb L:Boumaa; S:P:R:Clarkb; P:Ahirwarb; C:Hainsb; G:Balakrishnanb a Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 b Center for High Technology Materials, University of New Mexico, 1313 Goddard SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106 REU Paper, submitted August 3rd, 2012 Abstract The goal of this project was to grow and characterize 2.xµm VECSELs within the III-Sb material system. We grew QW-based active regions on GaSb substrates, using AlSb cladding layers, Al0:25Ga0:75Sb barrier layers and 9 In0:2Ga0:8Sb QWs, along with about 5nm of GaSb on top to prevent oxidation in the AlSb cladding layer. For the DBR, we grew 19 pairs of AlAs0:08Sb0:92/GaSb DBR on the GaSb substrate. Once the sample chips were characterized (SEM, XRD, and FTIR reflectivity for the DBR, XRD and PL for the active region), we assembled a lasing setup to attempt to optically pump the chip with a 75W diode laser. We stuck the chip to a Cu-Ag-Al heat sink with Mung paste (a silver grease), and attempted to achieve lasing. Ultimately, we ran short on time for our project, and were unable to achieve lasing action. However, previous research from Balakrishnan et al. was used to exemplify expected results. 1 Introduction Upon its realization in 1960, the first working laser was labeled as a \solution looking for a problem" [1]. But the convenience of having control over a narrow, monochromatic (near-single wavelength), coherent beam of light soon became evident to researchers, the government, and the public alike. Half a century later, lasers are now ubiquitous; they are omnipresent in consumer electronics, information technology, scientific research, medicine, law enforcement, the military, and even cosmetic enhancements like hair removal and acne treatment. Moreover, classes of lasers beyond T. H. Maiman's original design have been developed. Maiman's laser was only capable of pumping his active material (ruby - chromium in corundum) for a few milliseconds, so although he achieved operation at 694.3nm, it was only in short flashes [2]. Continuous wave (CW) operation is more sought after today, but Maiman's technique of rapidly pumping a laser developed into mode locking and q-switching, techniques that can deliver incredibly high levels of power on femto (10−15) and even attosecond (10−18) scales. Further, lasing is obtainable outside of Maiman's solid-state laser design. Today, we have gas lasers, diode lasers, photonic crystal lasers, and the specific topic of this report: 2.0µm VECSELs grown on GaSb substrates. We cultivate different classes of lasers for different uses. One major factor in laser design is desired output wavelength and tunability - that is, what part in the electromagnetic spectrum you want to achieve lasing at. Commercially available lasers are mostly available between the ultraviolet (UV, λ ≈ 200nm) and far-infrared (FIR, λ ≈ 700µm), but xasers (x-ray emitting lasers) are also available in laboratory settings (see Figure 21 in the appendix). In the mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) range (λ ≈ 2 − 5µm) that we will be working in, high-power, high-quality lasers have applications in remote sensing technologies (eg: LIDAR), gas absorption spectroscopy (useful for climate monitoring), and free-space optical communication; applications thus exist both in science and also in the military. 1 Since their proposal in the early 1990s [3], vertical external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs), also known as optically-pumped semiconductor disk lasers (OPSDL), or just semi- conductor disk lasers (SDLs) have been significantly developed by the scientific community for these very uses. Unlike other laser systems that emit in short and mid-infrared wavelengths, op- tically pumped VECSELs can be designed to scale to high powers while maintaining low beam divergence, all while having broad wavelength tunability. Further, due to the external nature of the VECSEL's cavity (in contrast to say, the VCSEL system that preceded the VECSEL), VEC- SELs are capable of incorporating intra-cavity elements for various ends; take for example using nonlinear crystals to attain frequency doubling and quadrupling. It's no surprise that they have been called the \ultimate disk-laser" [4] - they combine all this functionality while being compact and relatively efficient. In short, VECSELs provide: High beam quality (nearly TEM00), in both CW and short-pulse generation Broad tunability - you can choose your semiconductor material systems to lase all throughout the visible [5] [6] and IR [7] spectra, and when using quantum dots (QD) or quantum dashes (QDash) can tune the emission of a single SDL structure to a greater degree than with QWs Easy power scalability - since you are optically pumping your chip, increasing your pump- beam diameter, and thus the gain area of your active region, will increase lasing power. Reaching tens of watts while operating CW is very feasible The ability to incorporate intracavity elements (usually nonlinear crystals for frequency dou- bling/quadrupling, but also birefringent filters for tuning) Potential for compactness While major challenges in realizing the potential of VECSELs include minimizing the quantum defect, meeting growth constraints (lattice matching layers, QW placement, getting a good gain- microcavity alignment), and thermal management. For the latter, using effective heat dissipation systems is critical to prevent heat spreading from limiting the maximum output power of the VECSEL. 2 Background 2.1 What is a VECSEL? Firstly, a laser is an optoelectronic device that emits light through an amplification process based on the stimulated emission of photons. \Laser" itself is an acronym, standing for (L)ight (A)mplification by (S)timulated (E)mission of (R)adiation. Lasers are useful because the light they emit is monochromatic, has a high degree of directionality, and it is coherent (the waves of light are consistently in phase with each other). The basic operating principles of a laser (stimulated emission, population inversion, optical resonators) are presumed background knowledge. VECSELs are vertical external-cavity surface-emitting lasers. They are a subset of semicon- ductor lasers that have their resonator cavity formed between a high-reflectivity distributed Bragg 2 reflector (DBR) dielectric mirror and an external spherical mirror, also known as an external out- put coupler (OC). The gain for the laser is provided by a quantum well (QW) active region which is grown on top of the DBR (there has also been experimentation with quantum dot and quantum dash active region designs, but they are beyond the scope of this report). The QWs in the active region are evenly spaced in what is known as a resonant periodic gain (RPG) arrangement. VECSELs operate as shown in Figure 1: use an external laser (in our case, we use a diode laser) to optically pump a semiconductor chip. The semiconductor chip contains a QW-based active region on top of the DBR, so the high-energy incident pump photons are absorbed in separate pump-absorbing layers that double as quantum well barriers. Back-reflection from the on-chip laser cavity mirror (ie: the DBR) sets up an intracavity electrical field standing wave (see Figure 13 - discussed in more detail later) between the DBR and the semiconductor-air interface due to the high refractive index difference between air and the semiconductor, which causes partial reflection. The pump photons create electron-hole pairs in the absorbing region, which are confined in 2 spatial dimensions to the smaller bandgap QWs and then recombine in the QW region to emit lasing photons with lower energy than the incident photons (the difference between the two energies is known as the quantum defect). Note that the output coupler which completes the cavity must also have a fairly high reflectivity (usually coupling between 1% and 4%, compared to the DBRs 99.99% reflectivity at emission wavelength), since the gain from a single pass through the QWs is at most a few percent. Figure 1: Schematic of a simple VECSEL. The angled pump beam creates an elliptically excited active region. The cut-away inset shows the active region, DBR, and heat-spreader. Source: [4] 2.1.1 Surface v. Edge Emitters As a note on the emission geometry of the VECSEL, it is important to understand that VECSELs are surface-emitting instead of edge-emitting (Figure 2 illustrates the difference). Edge emitting lasers use a waveguide to confine light to the plane of the semiconductor chip and then emit light from the edge of the chip. The output beam from these chips (if it is going to remain in single-transverse mode operation) has a wider dimension in the plane of the chip, usually around 3 1 by several microns. Although it is possible to reach up to several hundred mW of output power, the beam's wider dimension in the chip's plane often results in asymmetric and angular divergence of the beam [8]. Conversely, surface-emitting lasers emit light orthogonal to the plane of the laser chip. The benefit of this lies in the fact that their beam has a circular cross section and larger beam size, and thus the beam is both symmetric and also has less divergence than edge-emitting lasers. Even though at beam wavelengths greater than 10µm the output becomes multimoded, below LWIR surface-emitting geometry is a better choice [8]. Figure 2: (a) Semiconductor edge-emitting laser. (b) Surface emitting geometry (used in VEC- SELs). Source: [8] 3 VECSEL Design Considerations 3.1 Material System Designing the VECSEL requires knowledge of what sort of wavelength we want to operate at. We have opted for MWIR, at a wavelength around 2.0µm (hence \2.xµm"). Referring to Figure 3, it seems that we can choose between GaSb and InAs as base substrates for our growth, since they are nearest to our desired emission wavelength1 .