Room temperature operation of n-type Ge/SiGe terahertz quantum cascade lasers predicted by non-equilibrium Green's functions

Abstract

n-type Ge/SiGe terahertz quantum cascade laser are investigated using non-equilibrium Green's functions calculations. We compare the temperature dependence of the terahertz gain properties with an equivalent GaAs/AlGaAs QCL design. In the Ge/SiGe case, the gain is found to be much more robust to temperature increase, enabling operation up to room temperature. The better temperature robustness with respect to III-V is attributed to the much weaker interaction with optical phonons. The effect of lower interface quality is investigated and can be partly overcome by engineering smoother quantum confinement via multiple barrier heights.

arXiv comment5 pages, 5 figures

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• Intersubband transition engineering in the conduction band of asymmetric coupled Ge/SiGe quantum wells
• Feasibility of lasing in the GaAs Reststrahlen band with HgTe multiple quantum well laser diodes
• 500-period epitaxial Ge/Si0.18Ge0.82 multi-quantum wells on silicon
• Semiconductor-based electron flying qubits: Review on recent progress accelerated by numerical modelling