The SPIE Optics + Photonics 2022 website: “Escape every day and talk with scientists and engineers and share the spontaneous ideas that only happen when we gather in person” – there’s no use convincing us more, after over 2 years of online and hybrid conferences we all say YES to meeting in person! As Dorota Pierścińska, Ph.D. told us: “It’s so good to take part in a conference “off-line” again.”
As you might guess, however, face-to-face meetings are not the only reason why our researchers from the Infrared Photonics Research Group decided to conquer San Diego in the USA. Kamil Pierściński, Ph.D., Dorota Pierścińska, Ph.D., Aleksander Kuźmicz, Ph.D., Grzegorz Sobczak, Ph.D., Piotr Gutowski, Ph.D., and Krzysztof Chmielewski, Eng. have written a paper on “Multi-section coupled cavity mid-IR quantum cascade lasers” in which they presented a modified approach to coupled cavity QCLs, based on multisection (3 sections) coupled cavity QCLs. The range of spectral tuning is very important from the point of view of applications in optical sensing techniques based on the intrapulse tuning of the laser emission. They have designed and fabricated 3-section CC QCLs characterized by intrapulse wavelength tuning of 2.8 cm-1, obtained for 2-microsecond pulse width.
– The device operates above room temperature.
– The improvement of the spectral tuning of the 3-section device is compared to the 2-section laser.
– The third section significantly improved the performance of the laser in terms of single-mode intrapulse wavelength tuning.
The second presentation has referred to “The experimental investigation of thermal properties of mid-IR quantum cascade lasers.” The paper was written by D. Pierścińska, G. Sobczak, Katarzyna Krajewska, K. Chmielewski, A. Kuźmicz, and P. Gutowski.
Improving the heat dissipation in QCLs is essential from the point of view of a growing number of their applications, which require better performance. In this paper, our scientists have proposed and experimentally demonstrated the possibility of a significant reduction of AR temperature without sophisticated and fabrication-intensive means.
They examined the influence of electroplated gold thickness on thermal and electro-optical properties of InP-based QCLs. Numerical modeling, that was performed, predicts a significant reduction of the laser core temperature of epi-side up mounted ridge waveguide QCLs with increased thickness of electroplated gold. Predictions of the numerical model were confirmed experimentally by means of electro-optical, spectral, and thermal characterization.
The presentations mentioned above were 2 out of 2000 in the fields of optics and photonics that have provided us with innovative ideas for the future R&D works and we hope that they will also solve today’s problems.