The Physics and Engineering of Compact Quantum Dot-based Lasers for Biophotonics E-Book
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- Herausgeber: Wiley-VCH
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Written by a team of European experts in the field, this book addresses the physics, the principles, the engineering methods, and the latest developments of efficient and compact ultrafast lasers based on novel quantum-dot structures and devices, as well as their applications in biophotonics.
Recommended reading for physicists, engineers, students and lecturers in the fields of photonics, optics, laser physics, optoelectronics, and biophotonics.
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Seitenzahl: 426
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Related Titles
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
List of Contributors
Introduction
References
Chapter 1: Quantum Dot Technologies
1.1 Motivation for Development of Quantum Dots
1.2 Gain and Quantum Confinement in a Semiconductor Laser
1.3 Self-Assembled Quantum Dot Technology
1.4 Physics and Device Properties of S–K Quantum Dots
1.5 Extension of Emission Wavelength of GaAs-Based Quantum Dots
1.6 Future Prospects
Acknowledgments
References
Chapter 2: Ultra-Short-Pulse QD Edge-Emitting Lasers
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Simulations
2.3 Broadly Tunable Frequency-Doubled EC-QD Lasers
2.4 Two-Section Monolithic Mode-Locked QD Lasers
2.5 Tapered Monolithic Mode-Locked QD Lasers
2.6 QD-SOAs
2.7 Pulsed EC-QD Lasers with Tapered QD-SOA
2.8 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
Chapter 3: Quantum Dot Semiconductor Disk Lasers
3.1 Introduction
3.2 General Concept of Semiconductor Disk Lasers
3.3 Toward Operation at the 1–1.3 μm Spectral Range
3.4 Quantum Dots Growth and Characterization
3.5 Quantum Dots for Laser Application: From Edge Emitters to Disk Lasers
3.6 Details of the Quantum Dot Gain Media for Disk Cavity
3.7 Disk Laser Performance
3.8 Tunable Quantum Dot Semiconductor Disk Laser
3.9 Second Harmonic Generation with Quantum Dot Disk Laser Cavity
3.10 Disk Laser with Flip-Chip Design of the Gain Medium
3.11 Conclusions
Acknowledgments
References
Chapter 4: Semiconductor Quantum-Dot Saturable Absorber Mirrors for Mode-Locking Solid-State Lasers
4.1 Scope of the Chapter
4.2 Introduction
4.3 Quantum-Well Saturable Absorbers: Overview
4.4 Quantum-Dot Saturable Absorbers: Basic Principles and Fabrication Technologies
4.5 Quantum-Dot Saturable Absorbers for Mode-Locking of Solid-State Lasers at 1 μm
4.6 p-i-n Junction QD SESAMs and Their Applications
4.7 InAs/GaAs QD-SAM for 10 GHz Repetition Rate Mode-Locked Laser at 1.55 μm
4.8 InP Quantum Dot Saturable Absorbers for Mode-Locking High-Repetition Rate Ti:sapphire Lasers
4.9 Conclusions
Acknowledgments
References
Chapter 5: QD Ultrafast and Continuous Wavelength Laser Diodes for Applications in Biology and Medicine
5.1 Compact Laser Systems for Nonlinear Imaging Applications
5.2 QD Devices and Their Application in Optical Coherence Tomography
5.3 Infrared QD Laser Application in Cancer Photodynamic Therapy: Killing Tumor Cells without Photosensitizers
Acknowledgments
References
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Future Perspectives
Index
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Editor
Prof. Edik U. Rafailov
School of Engineering
Physics and Mathematics
University of Dundee
Harris Building
Dundee
DD1 4HN
Scotland, UK
Cover
Illustrations by Stefan Breuer.
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Foreword
This is a unique book that covers a broad spectrum of work that includes theoretical and experimental details of recent results in the development of compact ultra-short-pulse lasers based on quantum-dot materials. It also reports the progress in some related new application areas.
Nanomaterials such as quantum dots are tiny clusters of semiconductor material with dimensions of only a few nanometers. These nanostructures are often called artificial atoms, because the charge carriers in these systems (electrons or holes) can only occupy a restricted set of energy levels, similar to the electrons in an atom. Such materials exhibit the ultimate in ultrafast recovery time under both gain and absorption conditions. The remarkable achievements in the epitaxial growth of quantum-dot structures have enabled fabrication with laser-compatible optical quality, which facilitates the generation of light with high efficiency. Owing to the control available using the latest growth techniques, the emission/absorption wavelengths can be engineered over wide latitude and this is exploited in a range of applications.
This book offers coverage of many of the recent results in the area of quantum-dot-based ultrafast lasers. It contains discussions of a new generation of compact and efficient laser sources, with accompanying descriptions on how these new lasers have been deployed in applications that are currently served by conventional, more bulky and expensive, ultrafast solid-state lasers. One such application sector is biomedical photonics, where compact simple-to-use sources are needed to enhance system-adoption in these new application areas and to move these newly emerging techniques toward the point of care. These advances offer the opportunity for the integration of these practical and efficient devices into sophisticated, minimally/noninvasive optical diagnostics and therapeutics.
March 2013
Professor Wilson Sibbett CBE, FRS, FRSE
University of St Andrews
School of Physics and Astronomy
List of Contributors
Introduction
Edik U. Rafailov
Since the invention of the laser in the early 1960s, scientists and engineers have been producing and advancing ultra-short pulsed lasers to extraordinary capabilities. Starting from lasers operated in a continuous wave regime, ultra-short (picosecond to femtosecond) optical pulses are now commonplace in research laboratories and increasingly in the industrial and commercial sectors. For perspective, if 1 s was scaled down to 1 fs (0.000 000 000 000 001 s), the age of the universe would scale to approximately 10 min. Such ultra-short pulses allow us to gain unique insights into matter at the micrometer and nanometer scales, enabling the study of structures at the subatomic level. In the same way that a disco strobe light “freezes” the motion of dancers, an ultra-short pulse laser can “freeze” the motion of rapid events such as the dynamics of molecules. Therefore, it is now possible, for example, to measure the relaxation processes of carriers in semiconductors and the dynamics of chemical reaction, and even allows us to perform electrooptical sampling of high-speed electronics. The enormous impact of ultrafast optical sources has already been recognized in the attribution of two Nobel prizes to Zewail (1999) and Hansch (2005), for applications in femtochemistry and laser-based precision spectroscopy.
The unique combination of high peak power with low average power that is made possible by ultra-short pulses has also enabled the photoablation of biological tissues with minimal thermal effects. This high peak power has also allowed the exploitation of new nonlinear optical effects in biological structures, which can be used for high-resolution nonlinear multiphoton imaging. Additionally, the ultra-broad spectral bandwidth associated with ultra-short pulses has made noninvasive medical diagnostics possible, allowing tissue imaging with micrometer resolution. However, the implementation of femtosecond pulse sources within biomedical applications will remain limited until femtosecond laser modules can be designed as affordable, integrable optoelectronic and photonic technologies. Recent developments and progress of ultrafast laser sources has enabled their use in a variety of applications from body treatment (dentistry, eye surgery, dermatology, tattoo removal, hair removal, photodynamic therapy) [1], displays [2], spectroscopy, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), photochemistry (cancer detection and treatment) [3, 4], and optical metrology (precise measurement, navigation, scanners, optical sampling, all-optical clock, fiber-optic sensors) [5] to data storage (CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, magnetooptical disks, holography), [6] material processing [7], and laser cooling [8]. New scientific doors were opened with the generation of femtosecond optical pulses in such areas as material processing, biophotonics, and telecommunication. The low average power allowed is crucial for a number of applications as the overall thermal stress can be reduced, for example, micromachining and photoablation of biological tissues. Cell surgery is now possible without catastrophic surface damage of the membrane. The high peak power allowed by a femtosecond laser is very useful for generating nonlinear optical responses in biological samples. Several innovative nonlinear optical microscopy techniques involving multiphoton fluorescence and second harmonic generation became widely used in biological and biomedical research by providing high-resolution 3D imaging of fine structures at a cellular level [9]. Femtosecond-laser-based optical tweezers can be now used in near-field optics as well as for studying fundamental cell biology and cell mechanics [10, 11]. In telecommunication, ultrafast optical technology is facing the challenge of ever-increasing data capacity in communication networks. Ultra-high-speed data streams have been created using femtosecond pulses [12]. Code-division multiple accesses (CDMA) are possible owing to the broadband coherence of ultra-short optical pulses. Again, because of the high peak power, these lasers can be used for nonlinear processes such as frequency conversion, optical time-domain multiplexing (OTDM) and demultiplexing, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), and further spectral broadening [13]. Precise timing of the short pulses is used for all-optical clock recovery [14].
Current solid-state lasers based on crystalline gain materials (such as Ti:sapphire) have so far been delivering the best performances in terms of femtosecond pulse durations, very high peak power, and low jitter. Nevertheless, these laser systems present intrinsic limitations that have been preventing their widespread use in industrial and medical applications. These laser sources are very expensive, cumbersome, and inefficient. They are also complex to operate and optimize, requiring highly skilled technical expertise from the user. Despite efforts to miniaturize them, the footprint of these laser sources at best still occupies the area of a large shoebox! In contrast, lasers based on semiconductor heterostructures have demonstrated superior efficiency while dramatically reducing the footprint by several orders of magnitude. This significant advance granted the Nobel Prize to Alferov (2000), from the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg.
The laser systems that are traditionally used for biomedical applications are very expensive, bulky, and complicated to use. The vision of the FAST-DOT project is to revolutionize the use of lasers in the biomedical field, providing both practitioners and researchers with matchbox-sized, ultra-high-performance lasers at a substantially lower cost, making their widespread use more affordable.
The principal objective of the FAST-DOT project was the development of efficient (potentially battery powered) and compact ultrafast lasers based on novel semiconductor nanostructures called quantum dots (QDs).
FAST-DOT was a €14.7M project (EU contribution €10.1M) coordinated by the University of Dundee, with a project consortium consisting of 18 of Europe's leading photonics research groups and companies from 12 different countries. The aim of the project was to take advantage of the unique properties of nanomaterials based on QDs to develop a new class of miniature lasers designed specifically for biomedical and imaging applications such as multiphoton imaging and cell surgery. FAST-DOT has already delivered significant advances and world record performances in demonstrating the unique properties of semiconductor nanomaterials based on QDs to realize a new class of semiconductor laser components.
Quantum dots (QD) are tiny clusters of semiconductor material with dimensions of only a few nanometres. These nanostructures are often called ‘artificial atoms’, because the charge carriers in these systems (electrons or holes) can only occupy a restricted set of energy levels, just like the electrons in an atom. Quantum dots are special semiconductor materials which, when produced under highly controlled conditions, can be customised with a range of attributes. The high level of control that is possible over the size of the produced crystal means that it is possible to precisely design QD-based lasers with particular characteristics such as specific wavelengths (or colours) that are difficult to reach using conventional laser technologies, ultra-fast/ultra-short pulses and generation of difficult to reach wavelengths.
Localized states in QD structures introduce new physics into our understanding of optoelectronic devices. When a QD laser was first proposed, the main motivation was to conceive a design for a low threshold, single-frequency, and temperature-insensitive laser, owing to the discrete nature of the density of states. In fact, while practical devices exhibit the predicted outstandingly low thresholds, the spectral bandwidths of such lasers were significantly broader than those of conventional quantum-well lasers. This novel property results from the self-organized growth of QDs with different sizes. This inhomogeneous broadening of the gain is an extremely useful phenomenon in the context of ultrafast applications, because a very wide bandwidth is available for the generation, propagation, and amplification of ultra-short pulses.
Investigations of the amplification of the femtosecond pulses and the ultrafast carrier dynamics of QD structures imply that such structures can be used simultaneously as an efficient broadband gain media and as fast saturable absorbers, either independently or monolithically, and thus can have a potentially enormous impact in ultra-short pulse laser design. Furthermore, QD-based lasers have real potential for generating much shorter pulses than their quantum-well counterparts. QD saturable absorbers also exhibit lower absorption saturation fluence than quantum-well materials, which strongly assists the self-starting of high-frequency mode-locking.
The remarkable achievements in QD epitaxial growth have enabled the current fabrication of QD structures with laser optical quality, which facilitates the generation of light with high efficiency. Owing to the control available using the latest QD growth techniques, emission/absorption wavelengths can be engineered over a wide span. QD structures can be made available at any wavelength from 1.0 to 1.31 µm and can extend up to 1.55 µm, with similar operational properties. This represents a significant advantage over conventional quantum well technology based on GaAs substrates, which could not cover this spectral interval. Using second and third harmonic generation techniques, the spectral range can thus be extended into the visible and UV regions. The spectral flexibility of QD materials can open up a range of applications with specific wavelength requirements, where the versatility of QD-based lasers can be fully exploited.
The lasers developed in FAST-DOT are mainly targeted toward compact sources of ultra-short pulses. As such, they are utilizing semiconductor QDs and semiconductor laser technology. The real strength of these lasers lies in their compact size, potentially low production cost, and good performance. The performance that FAST-DOT lasers can achieve is not sufficient to compete directly in terms of pulse duration or peak power with the Ti:sapphire lasers currently used in many applications, which can produce shorter pulses and higher peak powers, but with a high cost and complex system. However, there are certain applications where the performance that has been obtained from FAST-DOT lasers in terms of average power, peak power, pulse duration, pulse energy, and wavelength is more than sufficient to make them excellent sources for some applications where the ultra-high performance of a Ti:sapphire laser is not necessary, and the lower cost and smaller footprint would be a major benefit.
During the project duration, excellent progress has been made: novel QD structures and devices have been designed, fabricated, and evaluated by the project partners, detailed theoretical models have been developed for the simulation of QD mode-locked lasers, and novel operating regimes for the mode-locked lasers have been identified. The results obtained so far are highly encouraging and confirm the great potential of this technology to enable future development of compact low-cost laser products capable of high-power ultra-short pulse generation for applications in cell surgery and multiphoton imaging.
The ultimate goal of this book is to introduce to a broad audience the results achieved during the FAST-DOT project.
By placing a primary emphasis on novel materials, devices, and system designs, this book encompasses a range of challenging and cutting-edge research that exploits QD semiconductor structures, in particular:
The FAST-DOT project WEB site (www.fast-dot.eu) was launched in August 2008 and has acted as the main communication tool of the project.
References
1. Wardle, B. (2009) Principles and Applications of Photochemistry, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester.
2. Brennesholtz, M.S. and Stupp, E.H. (2008) Projection Displays, 2nd edn, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester.
3. Demtröder, W. (2003) Laser Spectroscopy: Basic Concepts and Instrumentation, 3rd edn, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York.
4. Telle, H.H. et al. (2007) Laser Chemistry: Spectroscopy, Dynamics and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester.
5. Horn, A. (2009) Ultra-fast Material Metrology, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.
6. Curtis, K. et al. (2010) Holographic Data Storage: From Theory to Practical Systems, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester.
7. Steen, W.M. and Mazumder, J. (2010) Laser Material Processing, 4th edn, Springer-Verlag, London.
8. Metcalf, H.J. and Van der Straten, P. (1999) Laser Cooling and Trapping, Springer-Verlag, New York.
9. Campagnola, P.J. and Loew, L.M. (2003) Second-harmonic imaging microscopy for visualizing biomolecular arrays in cells, tissues and organisms. Nat. Biotechnol., 21, 1356–1360.
10. Tirlapur, U.K. and Konig, K. (2002) Cell biology: targeted transfection by femtosecond laser. Nature, 418, 290–291.
11. Day, D. et al. (2006) High-speed fluorescence imaging and intensity profiling of femtosecond-induced calcium transients. Int. J. Biomed. Imaging, 2006, 1–6.
12. Attygalle, M. et al. (2003) All-optical coding of mode-locked semiconductor laser pulse trains for high bit rate optical communications. Opt. Commun., 217, 161–167.
13. Keeler, A. et al. (2003) The benefits of ultrashort optical pulses in optically interconnected systems. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron., 9, 477–485.
14. Arahira, S. et al. (2009) Polarization-, wavelength-, and filter-free all-optical clock recovery in a passively mode-locked laser diode with orthogonally pumped polarization-diversity configuration. IEEE J. Quantum Electron., 45, 476–487.
Chapter 1
Quantum Dot Technologies
Richard A. Hogg and Ziyang Zhang
1.1 Motivation for Development of Quantum Dots
The technologies that enable the creation of high-quality custom-engineered quantum dots (QDs) within a semiconductor matrix are of great importance for both new physics and new device applications. These “designer atoms,” created either singly or as an ensemble within a device have already had a significant impact from the study of mesoscopic physics, and allowing the fundamentals of light–matter interaction to be probed, through to laser devices with new functionality. This chapter concentrates on the motivations, technological advances, and recent achievements of QDs applied to new light sources. Further chapters discuss the exploitation of such devices in a range of devices and applications. Here, we discuss the development of strained epitaxy to realize an ensemble of QDs for optoelectronic applications.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
