Ten-layer InAs/In0.15Ga0.85As quantum dot (QD) laser structures have been grown using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on GaAs (001) substrate. Using the pulsed anodic oxidation technique, narrow (2 μm) ridge waveguide (RWG) InAs QD lasers have been fabricated. Under continuous wave operation, the InAs QD laser (2 × 2,000 μm2) delivered total output power of up to 272.6 mW at 10 °C at 1.3 μm. Under pulsed operation, where the device heating is greatly minimized, the InAs QD laser (2 × 2,000 μm2) delivered extremely high output power (both facets) of up to 1.22 W at 20 °C, at high external differential quantum efficiency of 96%. Far field pattern measurement of the 2-μm RWG InAs QD lasers showed single lateral mode operation.

In this work, we investigated the use of 10-layer InAs quantum dot (QD) as active region of an electroabsorption modulator (EAM). The QD-EAM is a p-i-n ridge waveguide structure with intrinsic layer thickness of 0.4 μm, width of 10 μm, and length of 1.0 mm. Photocurrent measurement reveals a Stark shift of ~5 meV (~7 nm) at reverse bias of 3 V (75 kV/cm) and broadening of the resonance peak due to field ionization of electrons and holes was observed for E-field larger than 25 kV/cm. Investigation at wavelength range of 1,300–1320 nm reveals that the largest absorption change occurs at 1317 nm. Optical transmission measurement at this wavelength shows insertion loss of ~8 dB, and extinction ratio of ~5 dB at reverse bias of 5 V. Consequently, methods to improve the performance of the QD-EAM are proposed. We believe that QDs are promising for EAM and the performance of QD-EAM will improve with increasing research efforts.

Low energy Ar+ion sputtering, typically below 1,200 eV, of GaAs at normal beam incident angle is investigated. Surface morphology development with respect to varying energy is analyzed and discussed. Dot-like patterns in the nanometer scale are obtained above 600 eV. As the energy approaches upper eV range regular dots have evolved. The energy dependent dot evolution is evaluated based on solutions of the isotropic Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. The results are in agreement with the theoretical model which describes a power law dependency of the characteristic wavelength on ion energy in the ion-induced diffusion regime.

In this letter, we investigate the effects of annealing and p-doping on the two-state competition of 1.3 μm InAs/GaAs quantum-dot (QD) lasers. By analyzing the modal gain competition from below-ground-state (GS) to above-excited-state (ES) thresholds, we found that: 1) the onset of ES lasing can be significantly delayed to a higher injection current with optimum annealing conditions; and 2) under the same annealing condition, p-doped QD lasers can sustain GS lasing to higher operating temperature as compared to the intrinsic ones. Consequently, we believe that this letter will be beneficial to researchers working on QD lasers for uncooled operation.