Photon transport transistor

Author

Van Zeghbroeck, B.J. ; Harder, C. ; Meier, H.P. ; Walter, W.

Author_Institution

IBM Zurich Res. Lab., Rueschlikon, Switzerland

fYear

1989

fDate

3-6 Dec. 1989

Firstpage

543

Lastpage

546

Abstract

A novel optoelectronic device is presented which consists of a light-emitting diode (LED) on top of a photodiode, with very tight optical coupling. The device is similar to a bipolar transistor except that photons rather than minority carriers are transported through the base. Devices fabricated with the GaAs-AlGaAs material system yield a current gain of up to four and the modest transit frequency of 70 MHz. The potential of the device lies in its use as an optoelectronic device for monolithic optoelectronic building blocks since the same structure can be used as a laser/LED, photodiode, phototransistor, and photon transport transistor. The same structure also allows lower laser thresholds to be achieved owing to photon recycling.<>

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; gallium arsenide; gradient index optics; integrated optoelectronics; light emitting diodes; photodiodes; phototransistors; semiconductor junction lasers; 70 MHz; GRINSCH; GaAs-AlGaAs; LED; laser thresholds; laser/LED; light-emitting diode; monolithic optoelectronic building blocks; optoelectronic device; photodiode; photon carriers; photon recycling; photon transport transistor; phototransistor; tight optical coupling; transit frequency; Bipolar transistors; Frequency; Laser modes; Light emitting diodes; Optical coupling; Optical materials; Optoelectronic devices; Photodiodes; Phototransistors; Recycling;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting, 1989. IEDM '89. Technical Digest., International

Conference_Location

Washington, DC, USA

ISSN

0163-1918

Print_ISBN

0-7803-0817-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.1989.74340

Filename

74340