THE EFFECT OF LATERAL LEAKAGE CURRENT ON THE EXPERIMENTAL GAIN CURRENT-DENSITY CURVE IN QUANTUM-WELL RIDGE-WAVE-GUIDE LASERS

We stress the importance of considering the effect of lateral leakage current on the material gain/current-density characteristics measured from ridge-waveguide diode lasers. It is found that the inclusion of lateral leakage current is crucial to obtaining a self-consistent result. An experimental demonstration has been performed on an In0.2Ga0.8As/AlGaAs strained single quantum-well laser sample, from which a gain curve with transparency current density of 53.8 A/cm2 was obtained. By using devices of different geometries, the variation of leakage currents is measured and the accuracy of the resultant gain curves is discussed.