Internal thermoelectric heating and cooling in heterostructure diode lasers

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Abstract
Summary form only given. Pulsed electrical injection of a semiconductor laser typically results in better performance compared with continuous wave operation. Pulsed lasers tend to have lower threshold current, higher quantum efficiency, more stable performance over varying ambient temperature, and the ability to operate at longer wavelengths. This dramatic difference in performance underscores the importance of heat generation and transport in semiconductor lasers. We develop here a new heat model for a semiconductor device that takes into account more rigorously the thermoelectric properties of the constituent layers. We apply the concept of heterostructure integrated cooling to a SCH quantum well laser. Peltier cooling can be optimized in a device by engineering the band offsets in such a way that current both into and out of the active region removes heat from the lattice. We call this device an ICICLE (injection current internally cooled light emitter).