Electrically pumped microcavity polariton lasers on nonpolar m-plane and semipolar GaN

该计划的目的是了解垂直腔发射器和腔极化激元的基本原理，导致电泵浦微腔激光器和极化激元激光器在非极性m平面和半极性GaN上的调谐。智力的优点是在演示一种新型的增益介质和先进的微腔技术，通过开发一个模型系统，使用氮化物材料与大激子结合能，改进的光学矩阵元素和高空穴浓度的非极性和半极性取向。开发室温低阈值极化激元激光器将需要集成高反射率GaN基底部和电介质顶部反射器、高质量氮化物外延异质结构和量子威尔斯、以及支持均匀载流子注入同时保持强激子-光子耦合状态的有效接触层和有源区异质结构。更广泛的影响是材料科学和微腔器件技术的进步，用于开发一种新型激光器，与垂直腔面发射激光器相比，其阈值显着降低，并为教育研究生和本科生提供理想的多学科研究环境尖端半导体光电子学和微腔物理学的基础。变革性应用包括光学逻辑元件，与传统的硅基电子器件相比，其工作功率要低得多，用于超快光学计算和片上通信，从而显著节省能源，从而减少碳排放。本科生，通过现有的暑期研究计划招募，将被列入这项研究和教育基础设施将通过基于网络的努力，并通过将基本发现纳入研究生课程得到加强。

The objective of this program is to understand the fundamentals governing vertical cavity emitters and cavity polaritons leading to attunement of electrically pumped microcavity lasers and polariton lasers on nonpolar m-plane and semipolar GaN. The intellectual merit is in demonstrating a new type of gain medium and advancing microcavity technologies by developing a model system using nitride materials with large exciton binding energies, improved optical matrix elements and high hole concentrations in the nonpolar and semipolar orientations. Developing room temperature low threshold polariton lasers will require integration of high reflectivity GaN-based bottom and dielectric top reflectors, high quality nitride epitaxial heterostructures and quantum wells, and efficient contact layers and active region heterostructures supporting uniform carrier injection while preserving the strong exciton-photon coupling state. The broader impacts are the advancement of materials science and microcavity device technologies for the development of a new type of laser with significantly lower threshold compared to the vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and in providing an ideally suited multidisciplinary research environment for educating graduate and undergraduate students in the fundamentals of cutting-edge semiconductor optoelectronics and microcavity physics. The transformative applications include optical logic elements operating at much lower power levels compared to conventional Si-based electronics for ultrafast optical computing and on-chip communications with significant energy savings and therefore reduced carbon emissions. Undergraduate students, recruited through existing summer research programs, will be included in this research and educational infrastructure will be enhanced by web-based efforts and by incorporating the fundamental discoveries into the graduate curriculum.