ECE 532 - Compound Semiconductors and Diode Lasers

Fall 2023

TitleRubricSectionCRNTypeHoursTimesDaysLocationInstructor
Compnd Semicond & Diode LasersECE532C29987DIS41400 - 1450 M W F  3020 Electrical & Computer Eng Bldg Kent D Choquette

Official Description

Compound semiconductor materials and their optical properties. Diode lasers including quantum well heterostructure lasers, strained layer lasers, and quantum wire and quantum dot lasers. Current topics in diode laser development. Course Information: Prerequisite: ECE 340 and PHYS 486. Recommended: ECE 455; credit or concurrent registration in ECE 536.

Subject Area

  • Microelectronics and Photonics

Course Director

Description

Lectures and discussion on compound semiconductor materials and their optical properties. Diode lasers are discussed in detail including quantum well heterostructure lasers, strained layer lasers, and quantum wire and quantum dot lasers. Current topics in diode laser development are included.

Topics

  • Elemental and Compound Semiconductor Materials: Crystalline nature of solids, reciprocal lattice vectors, alloy semiconductors
  • Electronic Properties of Importance to Optical Semiconductors: Carrier effective masses and bandstructure, effect of temperature and pressure on bandgap, carrier scattering phenomena, density of carries in intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductors, bandtail states.
  • Optical Processes in Semiconductors: Recombination, absorption in semiconductors, matrix elements and oscillator strength for band-to-band transitions, radiation in semiconductors, relation between absorption and emission spectra, auger recombination
  • Semiconductor Heterostructures: The ideal heterosturcture, current-voltage characteristics, real heterostructure band offsets, other types of heterostructure band lineups
  • The Semiconductor Diode Laser: Broad area laser diodes, threshold current density and quantum efficiency, light-current characteristic, longitudinal mode spectra, lateral waveguides
  • Quantum Well Heterostructure Lasers: Basics of quantum well lasers, state filling in quantum well lasers, performance characteristics of QW Lasers
  • Strained Quantum Well Lasers: Strained layer structures, electronic structure and gain
  • High Speed Lasers: Rate equation analysis, laser dynamics, linewidth and chirp, relative intensity noise, high-seed laser design, large-signal modulation
  • Reduced Dimension Structures: Quantum wire lasers, quantum dot lasers Current
  • Topics in Semiconductor Lasers: Visible-wavelength diodes, long wavelength (lambda > 2 micrometers) semiconductor lasers, single-mode and tunable laser diodes, high-power semiconductor lasers, vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs)

Detailed Description and Outline

Topics:

  • Elemental and Compound Semiconductor Materials: Crystalline nature of solids, reciprocal lattice vectors, alloy semiconductors
  • Electronic Properties of Importance to Optical Semiconductors: Carrier effective masses and bandstructure, effect of temperature and pressure on bandgap, carrier scattering phenomena, density of carries in intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductors, bandtail states.
  • Optical Processes in Semiconductors: Recombination, absorption in semiconductors, matrix elements and oscillator strength for band-to-band transitions, radiation in semiconductors, relation between absorption and emission spectra, auger recombination
  • Semiconductor Heterostructures: The ideal heterosturcture, current-voltage characteristics, real heterostructure band offsets, other types of heterostructure band lineups
  • The Semiconductor Diode Laser: Broad area laser diodes, threshold current density and quantum efficiency, light-current characteristic, longitudinal mode spectra, lateral waveguides
  • Quantum Well Heterostructure Lasers: Basics of quantum well lasers, state filling in quantum well lasers, performance characteristics of QW Lasers
  • Strained Quantum Well Lasers: Strained layer structures, electronic structure and gain
  • High Speed Lasers: Rate equation analysis, laser dynamics, linewidth and chirp, relative intensity noise, high-seed laser design, large-signal modulation
  • Reduced Dimension Structures: Quantum wire lasers, quantum dot lasers Current
  • Topics in Semiconductor Lasers: Visible-wavelength diodes, long wavelength (lambda > 2 micrometers) semiconductor lasers, single-mode and tunable laser diodes, high-power semiconductor lasers, vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs)

Texts

Class notes and journal papers

Last updated

2/13/2013