Semiconductor lasers with an inversely biased active region for generation of millimeter wave modulated signals

A semiconductor laser structure is proposed to introduce field effects in its active region. It has five layers of p-n-i-p-n with four electrical contacts to the doped layers, where the current injection into an inversely biased active region is based on the operation of two complementary bipolar transistors with their base-collector junction common. The inverse bias is useful to incorporate carrier transfer phenomena like Gunn effect in semiconductor lasers. Our analysis on the proposed lasers shows that its lasing operation is possible while applying a high electric field more than 10(6) V/m in the carrier transfer domain. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.