High Power Extremely Shallow Quantum Well Modulators,

Abstract

Light modulators based on electroabsorption in quantum wells (QW's) have been extensively studied in recent years. Their operation relies on the fact that at room temperature a strong exciton can exist due to confinement in the quantum wells, which results in a strong absorption features which can be manipulated with an applied electric field. Applications include optical interconnection of integrated circuits, lightwave applications, and optical computing. For the latter there exists self electro-optic effect devices (SEED'S) which comprise of a QW p-i-n modulator in series with a battery and a load which may be another QW modulator. This circuit is bistable because of the negative resistance of the reverse biased QW modulator when illuminates at the QW exciton peak. This results from the fact that the exciton red-shifts with increasing electric field, causing the absorption, and hence the photocurrent, to decrease with increasing reverse bias.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 22, 1992
Accession Number
ADP007826

Entities

People

  • J. E. Cunningham
  • K. W. Goossen
  • L. M. F. Chirovsky
  • R. A. Morgan
  • W. Y. Jan

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Absorption
  • Circuits
  • Electric Fields
  • Integrated Circuits
  • Modulators
  • Optical Interconnects
  • Optical Modulators
  • Optoelectronics
  • Quantum Wells
  • Resistance

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Optical Physics and Photonics.
  • Semiconductor Device Technology

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Quantum Computing