Over One Watt Output Power Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers by Using High Doping Concentration and Variable Barrier-Well Height

A GaAs/AlGaAs-based terahertz quantum cascade laser with a peak power of 1.31 W and average power of 52 mW is demonstrated. To realize a high output power, an effective way is to increase the electron density at the active region by using a high doping level. This work aims to optimize a design enabling to use a heavy doping level, by realigning the resonant tunneling which can be seriously degraded due to a band bending from this heavy local doping. With variable quantum well and barrier height, the design owns an improved parameter tuning freedoms, and a saturation of peak gain can be achieved at a relatively high doping concentration of 1.0 x 10(17) cm(-3), which is twice higher than the recently reported device. Nonequilibrium Green's function method including full carriers scattering effect is used to carry out the design optimization, mainly including the realignment of resonant tunneling and suppression of leakages via high-energy confined levels. In the experiment, a 14 mu m thick active layer for this design is grown and also large mesa size is developed. To ensure a quasi-continuous wave (quasi-CW) operation, the heat dissipation is also managed.