Abstract

The prospect of fiber optical communications has spurred the development of LED and injection laser sources. The bulk of this effort has been devoted to GaAs/AlGaAs double heterostructure (DH) lasers, which emit at wavelengths between 0.8 and 0.9 µm. For years, these had been the only semiconductor lasers capable of continuous operation at room temperature. Recently, it has become clear, however, that both fiber losses and material dispersion are significantly lower in the region between 1 and 1.2 µm than at shorter wavelengths.^1,2 For these longer wavelengths, lasers based on new materials systems have been investigated.³–⁵ The first one which has been operated continuously at room temperature is the GaAsSb/AlGaAsSb DH injection laser.

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