MRI: Development of Ultrafast Diagnostic Instrumentation for Mid-IR QCL's

该项目将开发一种集成的实验室仪器，用于研究量子级联激光器（QCL）和相关半导体结构中的超快辐射和非辐射过程，并为优化组成、结构和制造技术提供反馈。它将与马里兰大学巴尔的摩县（UMBC）的MOCVD（金属有机化学气相沉积）铸造厂对接并分析产品，我们正在该铸造厂制造具有优异性能的室温QCL。它将包括一个超快中红外（mid-IR）可调谐泵浦探测装置，覆盖光谱范围3到12微米，脉冲持续时间为180秒，用于测量量子态弛豫时间和损耗机制。开发将建立在UMBC超快光学和光电子研究实验室现有的超快可见/近红外激光器、光学参数放大器和其他光子学仪器的基础上，以创建超短中红外光谱探测脉冲。中红外技术用于与医学诊断、环境监测以及化学或生物危害相关的传感分子光谱特征。QCL的研究人员作为新成立的NSF ERC“MIRTHE”（Mid-IR Technologies for Health and Environment）的成员与UMBC合作，他们需要这里描述的诊断能力，并已承诺使用它。智力价值将包括提高对QCL和类似半导体结构中的辐射过程的理解，以及开发先进，更高效的设备。这些功能将提供给大学和商业开发人员。开发新的诊断能力的更广泛影响将来自于它在多所大学的研究生培训中使用这些复杂量子结构的新类别的物理和工程，这些在科学，商业和政府领域变得越来越重要。其次，通过与该领域其他研究人员的密切互动，中红外辐射源的宝贵改进将扩散到与健康产业，环境监测和国土防御相关的一般市场。

MRI: Development of Ultrafast Diagnostic Instrumentation for Mid-IR QCL'sThis project will develop an integrated laboratory instrumentation to investigate ultrafast radiative and non-radiative processes in Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCL's) and related semiconductor structures, and to provide feedback for optimizing composition, structure, and manufacturing techniques. It will interface with, and analyze products from a MOCVD (Metallo-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition) foundry at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in which we are fabricating room-temperature QCL's with excellent properties. It will comprise an ultrafast mid-infrared (mid-IR) tunable pump-probe apparatus, covering the spectral range 3 to 12 microns, with 180 fs duration pulses, to measure quantum state relaxation times and loss mechanisms. Development will build upon existing ultrafast visible/near-IR lasers, optical parametric amplifiers and other photonics instrumentation in UMBC's Ultrafast Optics & Optoelectronics Research Laboratory, to create ultrashort mid-IR spectroscopic probing pulses. Mid-IR technology is used in sensing molecular spectral signatures associated with medical diagnosis, environmental monitoring, and chemical or biological hazards. QCL researchers who collaborate with UMBC as members of the new NSF ERC, "MIRTHE" (Mid-IR Technologies for Health and the Environment), need diagnostic capabilities such as described here, and have committed to its use. Intellectual merit will consist of improved understanding of radiation processes in QCL's and similar semiconductor structures, and in developing advanced, more efficient devices. Capabilities will be made available to universities and commercial developers. The broader impacts of developing new diagnostic capabilities will derive from its use in training graduate students at multiple universities in the physics and engineering of these new classes of intricate quantum structures, which are becoming increasingly important in the scientific, commercial, and government arenas. Secondly, through close interactions with other researchers in the field, valuable improvements in mid-IR radiation sources will diffuse into the general marketplace relating to the health industries, environmental monitoring, and homeland defense.