SEMICONDUCTOR LASER

Semiconductor diode lasers are by far the most common types of lasers. They are used in laser printers, DVD
players, laser pointers, and optical fiber communication systems. Indirect band gap materials such as silicon are not
preferred for the fabrication of semiconductor lasers as indirect transitions lead to poor light emission. Therefore
GaAs, InP, InGaAsP and their derivatives are used for the fabrication of semiconductor lasers.

The laser consists of a semiconductor p-n diode cleaved into a small chip. The schematic and mechanism are shown
in figures 1 and 2 respectively.

Figure1 . Schematics of semiconductor

laser devices.

Figure 2 Laser PN junction. (a) At

equilibrium, (b) Under forward bias
Semiconductor lasers make use of junction between different semiconductors as the active medium. Laser action is
achieved by heavily doping the junction which ensures availability of a large concentration of electron hole pairs for
recombination. Electrons are injected into the n-region, and holes into the p-region. At the junction between the n-
and p-regions we have both electrons in the conduction band and holes (i.e. empty states) in the valence band. This
creates population inversion between the conduction and valence bands, and gain is produced at the band gap
energy Eg of the semiconductor. The electrons in the conduction band drop to the empty states in the valence
band, and laser photons with energy hν = Eg are emitted. The drive voltage must be at least equal to Eg/e, where e
is the electron charge. The laser cavity is formed by using the cleaved facets of the chips. The refractive index of a
typical semiconductor is in the range 3-4, which gives about 30% reflectivity at each facet. This is enough to support
lasing, even in crystals as short as ∼ 1 mm, because the gain in the semiconductor crystal is very high. Ends of the
device are polished so that spontaneously emitted light travels back and forth enabling stimulated emission. The
semiconductor must have a direct band gap to be an efficient light emitter. Silicon has an indirect band gap, and is
therefore not used for laser diode applications. The laser diode industry is based mainly on the compound
semiconductor GaAs, which has a direct band gap at 1.4 eV (890 nm). A typical design of a GaAs diode laser is
shown in Figure 1. By using alloys of GaAs, the band gap can be shifted into the red spectral region for making laser
pointers, or further into the infrared to match the wavelength for lowest losses in optical fibres (1500 nm). Blue
laser diodes are made from the wide band gap III–V semiconductor GaN and its alloys. These lasers are used in
“blue-ray” systems. The power conversion efficiency of electricity into light in a diode laser is very high, with figures
of 25% typically achieved. This compares with typical efficiencies of < 0.1% in gas lasers. Since the laser chips are so
small, it is possible to make high power diode lasers by running many GaAs chips in parallel. Laser power outputs
over 20W can easily be achieved in this way. These high power laser diodes are very useful for pumping Nd:YAG
lasers. Emission wavelengths span a wide range from near red into far infrared. Power output of semiconductor
lasers can be from a few milliwatts to several watts. The principle of semiconductor laser is basically that of p-n
junction. The junctions are either of differently doped but of the same material or between material having
different band gaps. The former are known as homojunction laser while the latter are called heterojunction lasers .
Homojunction lasers are not often used. The essential difference between semiconductor lasers and lasers based
on atomic energy levels is that the carriers in a semiconductor are distributed throughout the material. As a result,
while in case of a collection of atoms, the system interacts only with a probe beam whose frequency is equal to the
energy difference between atomic levels, a semiconductor would interact with a probe (photon) as long as the
energy of the photon is greater than the band gap.
Figure 3. Homojunction semiconductor laser.

The emitted laser light is monochromatic. Beside the “useful recombination” of electrons by stimulated emission
in the population inversion region, a large quantity of electrons are injected into the P-type semiconductor
where they can also recombine and emit either photons which do not take part in the lasing process, or
phonons (heat). This renders homojunction laser diodes quite inefficient, and only a fraction of the electrical
power supplied to the device is converted into laser light.
This problem can be solved by the use of a heterojunction structure. Let us take the example of the
AlGaAs/GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction laser diode shown in Fig. 4, the electrons in the conduction band which
are injected from a forward bias from the N-type AlGaAs into the P-type GaAs cannot spill over the potential
barrier EC created by the P-type GaAs / P-type AlGaAs junction. These electrons are thus confined in the
GaAs layer where the inversion population, and thus laser light emission, is produced. In addition, the refractive
index of AlGaAs is lower than that of GaAs, which causes the junctions to act as mirrors. This helps confine the
photons in the GaAs layer and limits the leakage of light into the AlGaAs layers. As a result the laser light
emission efficiency is greatly enhanced and the current threshold for laser light emission is reduced. In 2000,
Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kroemer got Nobel Prize for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in
optoelectronics and Jack St.Clair Kilby for participating in the invention of the integrated circuits.

Figure 4. AlGaAs/GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction laser diode