Design, fabrication, and characterization of high-speed light-emitting transistors and microcavity lasers

Carrier spontaneous recombination lifetime has been thought to be limited to ~ 1 ns in light-emitting diodes and diode lasers for the past forty years. In the present work the recombination lifetime demonstrated is able to be “tailored” (reduced) by the provided material system, cavity size, and layout design. In a light-emitting transistor or tilted-charge light-emitting diode, the effective carrier recombination lifetime can be readily reduced to 23 ps (spontaneous modulation bandwidth f-3dB = 7 GHz) by employing un-doped quantum wells in the highly-doped thin base region and allowing only “fast” recombining carriers to recombine through a reverse-biased base-collector junction boundary condition. A light-emitting transistor possesses, in addition, a unique three-terminal electrical-optical characteristic potentially leading to advantageous and useful features for high-speed short-range optical transmitters and interconnects. It has been shown that a microcavity vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser employing small aperture buried-oxide current and field confinement is also demonstrated with wider mode spacing and faster carrier recombination lifetime (enhanced Purcell factor ~ 2 to 8 times, but still limited cavity), lower threshold current, larger side mode suppression ratio, and higher photon density and temperature insensitivity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Chao-Hsin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Feng, Milton
• Holonyak, Nick, Jr.
• Cheng, Keh-Yung
• Hsieh, Kuang-Chien
• Jin, Jianming

• Light-emitting transistor
• light-emitting diode
• tilted-charge
• microcavity laser
• transistor laser

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2010 Chao-Hsin Wu

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18587

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/18587