Non-radiative current in 1.3 μm buried heterostructure lasers due to second order Auger process proportional to n2p2

Evaluation of radiative and non-radiative coefficients of carrier recombination in semiconductor lasers has been carried out chiefly by means of carrier lifetime measurements. An alternative to the lifetime method is the quantification of spontaneous radiation detected from substrate metallization windows. By means of a calibrated light collection set-up the detected photocurrent is converted to radiative current in the active layer volume. A typical plot of radiative and total currents versus active layer voltage is presented. Only very low leakage devices (1.3 μm InGaAsP) are considered