Eur. Phys. J. B (2021) 94: 123
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-021-00131-w

Regular Article - Mesoscopic and Nanoscale Systems

Optical gain enhancement and wavefunction confinement tuning in AlSb/InGaAsP/GaAsSb heterostructures

¹ Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Manipal University Jaipur, 303007, Jaipur, India
² Department of Electrical Engineering, Shiv Nadar University, 201314, G. B. Nagar, India

^d amitrathi1978@gmail.com

Received: 26 March 2021
Accepted: 21 May 2021
Published online: 6 June 2021

Abstract

The results from self-consistent $k·p$ computation of optical gain characteristics of AlSb/InGaAsP/GaAsSb type-II ultra-thin quantum-well heterostructures show a marked improvement in optical gain as compared to the InGaAsP/GaAsSb type-II ultra-thin quantum well heterostructures. The AlSb/InGaAsP/GaAsSb type-II ultra-thin quantum well heterostructures were designed to obtain enhanced optical gain as compared to InGaAsP/GaAsSb type-II quantum well heterostructures. An improvement in optical gain of 948 ${\mathit{cm}}^{-1}$ and a shift in peak energy of 0.03 eV is attributed to interband resonant tunnelling effect and the band alignment due to the presence of GaAsSb layer. Also, a narrower optical gain spectrum is observed in $\mathrm{AlSb}/{\mathrm{In}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{Ga}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{As}}_{0.8}{\mathrm{P}}_{0.2}/\mathrm{Ga}{\mathrm{As}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{Sb}}_{0.5}$ QW heterostructure as compared to the ${\mathrm{In}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{Ga}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{As}}_{0.8}{\mathrm{P}}_{0.2}/\mathrm{Ga}{\mathrm{As}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{Sb}}_{0.5}$ QW heterostructures. Furthermore, the effect of variation in well width has been studied at AlSb layer thickness 1 nm for optical gain enhancement and wavefunction confinement where the resonant tunnelling effect is observed.