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Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers

The low cross-plane thermal conductivity of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) is a significant limitation in their Continuous-Wave (CW) performance. Structural parameters such as individual layer thicknesses and interface density vary for QCLs with different target emission wavelengths, and these design...

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Autores principales: Villalobos Meza, Alejandro M., Shahzad, Monas, Hathaway, Dagan, Shu, Hong, Lyakh, Arkadiy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9696214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36363955
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13111934
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author Villalobos Meza, Alejandro M.
Shahzad, Monas
Hathaway, Dagan
Shu, Hong
Lyakh, Arkadiy
author_facet Villalobos Meza, Alejandro M.
Shahzad, Monas
Hathaway, Dagan
Shu, Hong
Lyakh, Arkadiy
author_sort Villalobos Meza, Alejandro M.
collection PubMed
description The low cross-plane thermal conductivity of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) is a significant limitation in their Continuous-Wave (CW) performance. Structural parameters such as individual layer thicknesses and interface density vary for QCLs with different target emission wavelengths, and these design parameters are expected to influence the cross-plane thermal conductivity. Though previous works have used theoretical models and experimental data to quantify thermal conductivity, the correlation between target wavelength and thermal conductivity has yet to be reported for QCLs. In this work, we observe a general trend across a group of QCLs emitting from 3.7 to 8.7 µm: as the QCL design changes to reduce wavelength, the thermal conductivity decreases as well. Numerically, we measured an approximate 70% reduction in thermal conductivity, from 1.5 W/(m·K) for the 8.7 µm device, to 0.9 W/(m·K) for the 3.7 µm device. Analysis of these structures with the Diffuse Mismatch Model (DMM) for thermal boundary resistance (TBR) shows that the largest contribution of this effect is the impact of superlattice interface density on the thermal conductivity. The observed changes in conductivity result in significant changes in projected CW optical power and should be considered in laser design.
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spelling pubmed-96962142022-11-26 Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers Villalobos Meza, Alejandro M. Shahzad, Monas Hathaway, Dagan Shu, Hong Lyakh, Arkadiy Micromachines (Basel) Article The low cross-plane thermal conductivity of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) is a significant limitation in their Continuous-Wave (CW) performance. Structural parameters such as individual layer thicknesses and interface density vary for QCLs with different target emission wavelengths, and these design parameters are expected to influence the cross-plane thermal conductivity. Though previous works have used theoretical models and experimental data to quantify thermal conductivity, the correlation between target wavelength and thermal conductivity has yet to be reported for QCLs. In this work, we observe a general trend across a group of QCLs emitting from 3.7 to 8.7 µm: as the QCL design changes to reduce wavelength, the thermal conductivity decreases as well. Numerically, we measured an approximate 70% reduction in thermal conductivity, from 1.5 W/(m·K) for the 8.7 µm device, to 0.9 W/(m·K) for the 3.7 µm device. Analysis of these structures with the Diffuse Mismatch Model (DMM) for thermal boundary resistance (TBR) shows that the largest contribution of this effect is the impact of superlattice interface density on the thermal conductivity. The observed changes in conductivity result in significant changes in projected CW optical power and should be considered in laser design. MDPI 2022-11-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9696214/ /pubmed/36363955 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13111934 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Villalobos Meza, Alejandro M.
Shahzad, Monas
Hathaway, Dagan
Shu, Hong
Lyakh, Arkadiy
Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers
title Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers
title_full Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers
title_fullStr Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers
title_full_unstemmed Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers
title_short Correlation of Superlattice Cross-Plane Thermal Conductivity with Emission Wavelength in InAlAs/InGaAs Quantum Cascade Lasers
title_sort correlation of superlattice cross-plane thermal conductivity with emission wavelength in inalas/ingaas quantum cascade lasers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9696214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36363955
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13111934
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