Abstract

Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) have gained increasing attention for their potential applications in future compact photonic and optoelectronic devices. The cylindrical geometry and strong two-dimensional confinement of electron, holes and photons make NWs ideal for semiconductor lasers with reduced threshold currents and narrower spectral line widths [1, 2]. GaAs NWs with direct band gap and high electron mobility have potential applications in lasers at the near-infrared region. However, it is challenging to obtain high quality for NW lasers, due to the NWs’ small size compared with the wavelength and the higher surface state density for GaAs NWs, which leads to significant mirror losses and strong decay of the emission intensity. Recently, we have realized lasing emission at room temperature from individual core-shell GaAs/AlGaAs NW with surface passivation to improve radiative efficiency [3].

© 2015 IEEE