Near-infrared and mid-infrared semiconductor broadband light emitters
Near-infrared and mid-infrared semiconductor broadband light emitters
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近红外和中红外半导体宽带发光器
DOI：
10.1038/lsa.2017.170
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发表时间：
2018-03-23
影响因子：
19.4
通讯作者：
Zhang, Zi-Yang
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hou, Chun-Cai;Chen, Hong-Mei;Zhang, Zi-Yang
半导体宽带光发射器已经成为一系列生物医学传感/成像应用的理想和重要的光源，特别是对于光学相干断层扫描系统。虽然近红外宽带光发射器在这些成像应用中的应用越来越广泛，但同时实现高光谱带宽和输出功率的要求对于此类设备仍然具有挑战性。由于相对弱的放大自发发射，作为量子级联结构中的子带间跃迁的非常短的非辐射载流子寿命的结果，获得期望的中红外宽带光发射器甚至更具挑战性。在过去的20年里，人们一直在努力追求高效率的宽带光增益和波导结构中的极低反射率，这是决定宽带光发射器性能的两个关键因素。本文描述了采用具有“J”形脊波导结构的调制p掺杂InGaAs/GaAs量子点有源区和具有双波导结构的量子级联有源区，在室温下工作在连续波模式下的近红外宽带光发射器和第一中红外宽带光发射器实现420 mW的高连续波光功率和4130 nm的宽带光宽度。端类似的单片集成锥形波导结构。这项工作是非常重要的，以提高现有的近红外光学相干断层扫描系统的性能，并描述了一个重大的进步，可靠的和具有成本效益的中红外成像和传感系统，目前不存在由于缺乏适当的低相干中红外半导体宽带光源。
Semiconductor broadband light emitters have emerged as ideal and vital light sources for a range of biomedical sensing/imaging applications, especially for optical coherence tomography systems. Although near-infrared broadband light emitters have found increasingly wide utilization in these imaging applications, the requirement to simultaneously achieve both a high spectral bandwidth and output power is still challenging for such devices. Owing to the relatively weak amplified spontaneous emission, as a consequence of the very short non-radiative carrier lifetime of the inter-subband transitions in quantum cascade structures, it is even more challenging to obtain desirable mid-infrared broadband light emitters. There have been great efforts in the past 20 years to pursue high-efficiency broadband optical gain and very low reflectivity in waveguide structures, which are two key factors determining the performance of broadband light emitters. Here we describe the realization of a high continuous wave light power of 420 mW and broadband width of 4130 nm with near-infrared broadband light emitters and the first mid-infrared broadband light emitters operating under continuous wave mode at room temperature by employing a modulation p-doped InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot active region with a 'J'-shape ridge waveguide structure and a quantum cascade active region with a dual-end analogous monolithic integrated tapered waveguide structure, respectively. This work is of great importance to improve the performance of existing near-infrared optical coherence tomography systems and describes a major advance toward reliable and costeffective mid-infrared imaging and sensing systems, which do not presently exist due to the lack of appropriate low-coherence mid-infrared semiconductor broadband light sources.