Mid-infrared interband cascade light emitting devices grown on off-axis silicon substrates.

The high-quality growth of midwave infrared light emitters on silicon substrates will advance their incorporation into photonic integrated circuits, and also introduce manufacturing advantages over conventional devices grown on lattice-matched GaSb. Here we report interband cascade light emitting devices (ICLEDs) grown on 4 degree offcut silicon with 12% lattice mismatch. Four wafers produced functioning devices, with variations from wafer to wafer but uniform performance of devices from a given wafer.

Methane detection using an interband-cascade LED coupled to a hollow-core fiber.

Midwave infrared interband-cascade light-emitting devices (ICLEDs) have the potential to improve the selectivity, stability, and sensitivity of low-cost gas sensors. We demonstrate a broadband direct absorption CH sensor with an ICLED coupled to a plastic hollow-core fiber (1 m length, 1500 µm inner diameter). The sensor achieves a 1σ noise equivalent absorption of approximately 0.

Interband Cascade Photonic Integrated Circuits on Native III-V Chip.

We describe how a midwave infrared photonic integrated circuit (PIC) that combines lasers, detectors, passive waveguides, and other optical elements may be constructed on the native GaSb substrate of an interband cascade laser (ICL) structure. The active and passive building blocks may be used, for example, to fabricate an on-chip chemical detection system with a passive sensing waveguide that evanescently couples to an ambient sample gas. A variety of highly compact architectures are described, some of which incorporate both the sensing waveguide and detector into a laser cavity defined by two high-reflectivity cleaved facets.

Near-infrared frequency comb generation in mid-infrared interband cascade lasers.

The interband cascade laser (ICL) is an ideal candidate for low-power mid-infrared frequency comb spectroscopy. In this work, we demonstrate that its intracavity second-order optical nonlinearity induces a coherent up-conversion of the generated mid-infrared light to the near-infrared through second-harmonic and sum-frequency generation. At 1.

Mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy with interband cascade lasers.

Two semiconductor optical frequency combs, consuming less than 1 W of electrical power, are used to demonstrate high-sensitivity mid-infrared dual-comb spectroscopy in the important 3-4 μm spectral region. The devices are 4 mm long by 4 μm wide, and each emits 8 mW of average optical power. The spectroscopic sensing performance is demonstrated by measurements of methane and hydrogen chloride with optical multi-pass cell sensitivity enhancement.

Resonant-cavity infrared detector with five-quantum-well absorber and 34% external quantum efficiency at 4 μm.

We report resonant-cavity infrared detectors with 34% external quantum efficiency at room temperature at the resonant wavelength of 4.0 μm, even though the absorber consists of only five quantum wells with a total thickness of 50 nm. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) linewidth is 46 nm, and the peak absorption is enhanced by nearly a factor of 30 over that for a single pass through the absorber.

Passively mode-locked interband cascade optical frequency combs.

Since their inception, optical frequency combs have transformed a broad range of technical and scientific disciplines, spanning time keeping to navigation. Recently, dual comb spectroscopy has emerged as an attractive alternative to traditional Fourier transform spectroscopy, since it offers higher measurement sensitivity in a fraction of the time. Midwave infrared (mid-IR) frequency combs are especially promising as an effective means for probing the strong fundamental absorption lines of numerous chemical and biological agents.

Compact photoacoustic module for methane detection incorporating interband cascade light emitting device.

A photoacoustic module (PAM) for methane detection was developed by combining a novel 3.2 μm interband cascade light emitting device (ICLED) with a compact differential photoacoustic cell. The ICLED with a 22-stage interband cascade active core emitted a collimated power of ~700 μW.

Spectral narrowing and stabilization of interband cascade laser by volume Bragg grating.

A volume Bragg grating recorded in photo-thermo-refractive glass was used to spectrally lock the emission from an 18-μm-wide interband cascade laser ridge to a wavelength of 3.12 μm. The spectral width of emission into the resonant mode is narrowed by more than 300 times, and the thermal wavelength shift is reduced by 60 times.

High-power continuous-wave interband cascade lasers with 10 active stages.

We report the pulsed and continuous wave (cw) performance of 10-stage interband cascade lasers (ICLs) emitting at both λ ≈3.2 μm and λ ≈3.45 μm.

Pulsed and CW performance of 7-stage interband cascade lasers.

We report a narrow-ridge interband cascade laser emitting at λ ≈3.5 μm that produces up to 592 mW of cw power with a wallplug efficiency of 10.1% and beam quality factor of M(2) = 3.

High-power room-temperature continuous-wave mid-infrared interband cascade lasers.

We demonstrate cw output powers >290 mW into a nearly diffraction-limited (M² ≈2.2) output beam from an interband cascade laser operating at λ = 3.6-3.

Continuous-wave interband cascade lasers operating above room temperature at λ = 4.7-5.6 μm.

We have substantially improved the performance of interband cascade lasers emitting at λ = 4.7 and 5.6 μm, by applying the recently-pioneered approach of heavily doping the injector regions to rebalance the electron and hole concentrations in the active quantum wells.

Performance characteristics of a continuous-wave compact widely tunable external cavity interband cascade lasers.

We present the design and performance of a novel broadly tunable continuous-wave external-cavity interband cascade laser (ECicL). The ICL die growth and fabrication, as well as the external cavity geometry are described. Tuning across the 3.