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Interband Cascade Lasers
Interband cascade lasers (ICLs) are a type of laser diode that can produce coherent radiation over a large part of the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. They are fabricated from epitaxially-grown semiconductor heterostructures composed of layers of indium arsenide (InAs), gallium antimonide (GaSb), aluminum antimonide (AlSb), and related alloys. These lasers are similar to quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) in several ways. Like QCLs, ICLs employ the concept of bandstructure engineering to achieve an optimized laser design and reuse injected electrons to emit multiple photons. However, in ICLs, photons are generated with interband transitions, rather than the intersubband transitions used in QCLs. Consequently, the rate at which the carriers injected into the upper laser subband thermally relax to the lower subband is determined by interband Auger, radiative, and Shockley-Read carrier recombination. These processes typically occur on a much slower time scale than th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laser Diode
file:Laser diode chip.jpg, The laser diode chip removed and placed on the eye of a needle for scale A laser diode (LD, also injection laser diode or ILD or semiconductor laser or diode laser) is a semiconductor device similar to a light-emitting diode in which a diode pumped directly with electrical current can create active laser medium, lasing conditions at the diode's p–n junction, junction. Driven by voltage, the doped p–n-transition allows for carrier generation and recombination, recombination of an electron with a electron hole, hole. Due to the drop of the electron from a higher energy level to a lower one, radiation is generated in the form of an emitted photon. This is spontaneous emission. Stimulated emission can be produced when the process is continued and further generates light with the same phase, coherence, and wavelength. The choice of the semiconductor material determines the wavelength of the emitted beam, which in today's laser diodes range from the inf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Research Laboratory
The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. Located in Washington, DC, it was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological development and prototyping. The laboratory's specialties include plasma physics, space physics, materials science, and tactical electronic warfare. NRL is one of the first US government scientific R&D laboratories, having opened in 1923 at the instigation of Thomas Edison, and is currently under the Office of Naval Research. As of 2016, NRL was a United States Navy Working Capital Fund, Navy Working Capital Fund activity, which means it is not a line-item in the US Federal Budget. Instead of direct funding from Congress, all costs, including overhead, were recovered through sponsor-funded research projects. NRL's research expenditures were approximately $1 billion per year. Research The Naval Research L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Waveguide
An optical waveguide is a physical structure that guides electromagnetic waves in the optical spectrum. Common types of optical waveguides include optical fiber waveguides, transparent dielectric waveguides made of plastic and glass, liquid light guides, and liquid waveguides. Optical waveguides are used as components in integrated optical circuits or as the transmission medium in local and long-haul optical communication systems. They can also be used in optical head-mounted displays in augmented reality. Optical waveguides can be classified according to their geometry (planar, strip, or fiber waveguides), mode structure ( single-mode, multi-mode), refractive index distribution (step or gradient index), and material (glass, polymer, semiconductor). Total internal reflection The basic principles behind optical waveguides can be described using the concepts of geometrical or ray optics, as illustrated in the diagram. Light passing into a medium with higher refractive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cladding (fiber Optics)
Cladding in optical fibers is one or more layers of materials of lower refractive index in intimate contact with a core material of higher refractive index. The cladding causes light to be confined to the core of the fiber by total internal reflection at the boundary between the core and cladding. Light propagation within the cladding is typically suppressed for most fibers. However, some fibers can support ''cladding modes'' in which light propagates through the cladding as well as the core. Depending upon the quantity of modes that are supported, they are referred to as multi-mode fibers and single-mode fibers. Improving transmission through fibers by applying a cladding was discovered in 1953 by Dutch scientist Bram van Heel. History The fact that transmission through fibers could be improved by applying a cladding was discovered in 1953 by van Heel, who used it to demonstrate image transmission through a bundle of optical fibers. Early cladding materials included o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deformation (mechanics)
In physics and continuum mechanics, deformation is the change in the shape (geometry), shape or size of an object. It has dimension (physics), dimension of length with SI unit of metre (m). It is quantified as the residual displacement (geometry), displacement of particles in a non-rigid body, from an configuration to a configuration, excluding the body's average translation (physics), translation and rotation (its rigid transformation). A ''configuration'' is a set containing the position (geometry), positions of all particles of the body. A deformation can occur because of structural load, external loads, intrinsic activity (e.g. muscle contraction), body forces (such as gravity or electromagnetic forces), or changes in temperature, moisture content, or chemical reactions, etc. In a continuous body, a ''deformation field'' results from a Stress (physics), stress field due to applied forces or because of some changes in the conditions of the body. The relation between stre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Beam Epitaxy
Molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) is an epitaxy method for thin-film deposition of single crystals. MBE is widely used in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, including transistors. MBE is used to make diodes and MOSFETs (MOS field-effect transistors) at microwave frequencies, and to manufacture the lasers used to read optical discs (such as CDs and DVDs). History The original ideas of the MBE process were first established by K. G. Günther. Films that he deposited were not epitaxial, but were deposited on glass substrates. With the development of vacuum technology, the MBE process was demonstrated by John Davey and Titus Pankey who succeeded in growing GaAs epitaxial films on single crystal GaAs substrates using Günther's method. Major subsequent development of MBE films was enabled by J.R. Arthur's investigations of kinetic behavior of growth mechanisms and Alfred Y. Cho's in situ observation of MBE process using reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heat Sink
A heat sink (also commonly spelled heatsink) is a passive heat exchanger that transfers the heat generated by an electronic or a mechanical device to a fluid medium, often air or a liquid coolant, where it is thermal management (electronics), dissipated away from the device, thereby allowing regulation of the device's temperature. In computers, heat sinks computer cooling, are used to cool central processing unit, CPUs, graphics processing unit, GPUs, and some chipsets and RAM modules. Heat sinks are used with other high-power semiconductor devices such as Transistor#Other transistor types, power transistors and optoelectronics such as lasers and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), where the heat dissipation ability of the component itself is insufficient to moderate its temperature. A heat sink is designed to maximize its surface area in contact with the cooling medium surrounding it, such as the air. Air velocity, choice of material, protrusion design and surface treatment are fact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heat
In thermodynamics, heat is energy in transfer between a thermodynamic system and its surroundings by such mechanisms as thermal conduction, electromagnetic radiation, and friction, which are microscopic in nature, involving sub-atomic, atomic, or molecular particles, or small surface irregularities, as distinct from the macroscopic modes of energy transfer, which are thermodynamic work and transfer of matter. For a closed system (transfer of matter excluded), the heat involved in a process is the difference in internal energy between the final and initial states of a system, after subtracting the work done in the process. For a closed system, this is the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics. Calorimetry is measurement of quantity of energy transferred as heat by its effect on the states of interacting bodies, for example, by the amount of ice melted or by change in temperature of a body. In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of measurement for he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Series Resistance
Two-terminal components and electrical networks can be connected in series or parallel. The resulting electrical network will have two terminals, and itself can participate in a series or parallel topology. Whether a two-terminal "object" is an electrical component (e.g. a resistor) or an electrical network (e.g. resistors in series) is a matter of perspective. This article will use "component" to refer to a two-terminal "object" that participates in the series/parallel networks. Components connected in series are connected along a single "electrical path", and each component has the same electric current through it, equal to the current through the network. The voltage across the network is equal to the sum of the voltages across each component. Components connected in parallel are connected along multiple paths, and each component has the same voltage across it, equal to the voltage across the network. The current through the network is equal to the sum of the currents throu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electric Current
An electric current is a flow of charged particles, such as electrons or ions, moving through an electrical conductor or space. It is defined as the net rate of flow of electric charge through a surface. The moving particles are called charge carriers, which may be one of several types of particles, depending on the Electrical conductor, conductor. In electric circuits the charge carriers are often electrons moving through a wire. In semiconductors they can be electrons or Electron hole, holes. In an Electrolyte#Electrochemistry, electrolyte the charge carriers are ions, while in Plasma (physics), plasma, an Ionization, ionized gas, they are ions and electrons. In the International System of Units (SI), electric current is expressed in Unit of measurement, units of ampere (sometimes called an "amp", symbol A), which is equivalent to one coulomb per second. The ampere is an SI base unit and electric current is a ISQ base quantity, base quantity in the International System of Qua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Well
A quantum well is a potential well with only discrete energy values. The classic model used to demonstrate a quantum well is to confine particles, which were initially free to move in three dimensions, to two dimensions, by forcing them to occupy a planar region. The effects of quantum confinement take place when the quantum well thickness becomes comparable to the de Broglie wavelength of the carriers (generally electrons and electron hole, holes), leading to energy levels called "energy subbands", i.e., the carriers can only have discrete energy values. The concept of quantum well was proposed in 1963 independently by Herbert Kroemer and by Zhores Alferov and R.F. Kazarinov.Zh. I. Alferov and R.F. Kazarinov, Authors Certificate 28448 (U.S.S.R) 1963. History The semiconductor quantum well was developed in 1970 by Leo Esaki, Esaki and Raphael Tsu, Tsu, who also invented synthetic superlattices. They suggested that a Heterojunction, heterostructure made up of alternating thin l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Well Laser
A quantum-well laser is a laser diode in which the active region of the device is so narrow that quantum confinement occurs. Laser diodes are formed in compound semiconductor materials that (quite unlike silicon) are able to emit light efficiently. The wavelength of the light emitted by a quantum-well laser is determined by the width of the active region rather than just the bandgap of the materials from which it is constructed.Foreword"The Origin of Quantum Wells and the Quantum Well Laser," by Charles H. Henry, in "Quantum Well Lasers," ed. by Peter S. Zory, Jr., Academic Press, 1993, pp. 1–13. This means that much shorter wavelengths can be obtained from quantum-well lasers than from conventional laser diodes using a particular semiconductor material. The efficiency of a quantum-well laser is also greater than a conventional laser diode due to the stepwise form of its density of states function. Origin of the concept of quantum wells In 1972, Charles H. Henry, a physic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
