In this thesis we have used temperature and high pressure to investigate the loss mechanisms present in visible, near infrared and infrared strained and unstrained semiconductor lasers. We find that tensile strained lasers show pressure dependent loss mechanisms similar in magnitude to those of unstrained and compressively strained devices. We present for the first time measurements of the temperature sensitivity of long wavelength lasers as a function of high pressure. Unstrained lasers show a pressure dependent temperature sensitivity whilst tensile strained lasers do not, over the range 150K to 300K. This leads us to conclude that phonon assisted Auger may be more significant than band to band Auger in tensile strained devices. We also demonstrate a possible mechanism for the decrease of Auger for these quantum well structures by estimating the effect of pressure on the gain - carrier density relation. High pressure measurements on 800nm GaAs quantum well lasers with superlattice barriers show the effect of changing the relative positions of the superlattice barrier IF and X minima. We find that the threshold current increases rapidly when the barrier is made indirect and conclude that this effect is due to repopulation of the barrier X minima with electrons from the active quantum well. For visible lasers we find that above lOkbar the effect of pressure on the threshold current is an increase which is attributable to losses from the active region to the X minima in the barrier. For a Philips bulk visible laser the threshold current remains relatively constant with pressure below lOkbar, whereas a Philips compressively strained device shows a decrease in Iý of about 25% up to 6kbar, a behaviour never seen before in short wavelength lasers. For the Philips 1% compressively strained laser the increase in Ith above 6kbar is also attributed to losses to the X minima. Measurements of a 1% compressively strained IBM laser showed immediate increases of threshold current with pressure, which is again attributed to the X minima in the barriers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:240189 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Hawley, Martin John |
| Publisher | University of Surrey |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/773024/ |
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