Comparative study of the band-offset ratio of conventionally strained and strain-compensated InGaAs/GaAs QW lasers

In order to achieve good high temperature laser performance, it is essential to have very deep electron wells. InGaAs system on GaAs substrate suffers from poor temperature characteristics due to the electron overflow over the rather small conduction band offset. By means of the Harrisonʹs model, we investigate the effect of the strain compensation on band alignments of InGaAs/GaAs laser system and show that strain compensation improves the band alignments of this laser system. The use of GaAsP or InGaP barrier instead of GaAs barrier results the strain-compensated laser system having better band alignment than that of the conventionally strained InGaAs. Therefore, high temperature operation has been anticipated in these laser systems with strain compensated barriers due to better electron and hole confinement as a result of the increased band offset and a more favorable band offset ratio.