Influence of the barriers on the temperature dependence of threshold current in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well lasers

Using window devices, light emission has been observed from the barrier regions of lasers with 25-A-wide quantum wells. From measurements of threshold current as a function of temperature on devices grown by molecular-beam epitaxy using different Al cells for the barriers, the strong influence of nonradiative barrier recombination processes on the threshold current has been demonstrated. Further measurements of threshold current as a function of hydrostatic pressure show that recombination from the L and X conduction-band minima makes an important contribution to the current. The calculations show how the temperature dependence of threshold depend on factors such as cavity length and the number of quantum wells.>