Dominant Influence of Interface Roughness Scattering on the Performance of GaN Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers

Effect of interface roughness of quantum wells, non-intentional doping, and alloy disorder on performance of GaN-based terahertz quantum cascade lasers (QCL) has been investigated by the formalism of nonequilibrium Green’s functions. It was found that influence of alloy disorder on optical gain is negligible and non-intentional doping should stay below a reasonable concentration of 10(17) cm(−3) in order to prevent electron-impurities scattering degradation and free carrier absorption. More importantly, interface roughness scattering is found the dominating factor in optical gain degradation. Therefore, its precise control during the fabrication is critical. Finally, a gain of 60 cm(−1) can be obtained at 300 K, showing the possibility of fabricating room temperature GaN Terahertz QCL.