ELECTRICALLY PUMPED BROADLY TUNABLE MID-INFRARED LASERS BASED ON QUANTUM CONFINED TRANSITION METAL DOPED SEMICONDUCTORS

摘要

Electrically pumped mid-IR semiconductor lasers that are operable at room temperature and possess a range of tunability up to 1100 nm, which constitutes a revolutionary (1-2 orders of magnitude) improvement in the range of tunability over existing semiconductor laser technology utilizing Doped quantum confined host material (DQCH) with characteristic spatial dimension of the confinement tuned to enable the overlap of the discrete levels of the host and impurity ions and efficient energy transfer from the separated host carriers to the impurity, wherein: said DQCH material has the formula TM:MeZ and/or MeX2Z4, wherein Me is selected from the group consisting of Zn, Cd, Ca, Mg, Sr, Ba, Hg, Pb, Cu, Al, Ga, In; Z is selected from the group consisting of S, Se, Te, O, N, P, As, Sb and their mixtures; X being selected from the group consisting of Ga, In, and Al; and TM is selected from the group consisting from V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni.