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Characteristics:Advantages:
1. It produces continuous wave output.
2. The power output is very high.
Disadvantages:
1. It is very difficult to grow different layers of PN junction.
2. The cost is very high.
Applications:
1.This type of laser is mostly used in optical applications
2. It is widely used in computers, especially on CD-ROMs.

UNIT V
NANO DEVICES

1. Write a note on quantum confinement

Quantum confinement is change of electronic and optical properties when the material
sampled is of sufficiently small size - typically 10 nanometers or less. The bandgap increases
as the size of the nanostructure decreases.
Specifically, the phenomenon results from electrons and holes being squeezed into a
dimension that approaches a critical quantum measurement, called the exciton Bohr raduis.

The first experimental evidence of the quantum confinement effects in clusters came from
crystalline CuCl clusters grown in silicate glasses

Spectroscopic studies on these clusters clearly indicated an up to 0.1 eV blueshift of the

absorption spectrum relative to the bulk. In the case of CdS clusters, the absorption threshold
is observed to blueshift by up to 1eV or more as the cluster size is decreased .

When the size of the cluster is smaller, its band gap is larger, consequently the first absorption
peak is shifted closer to the blue.
2. Electron Tunneling:

Tunneling refers to the ability of using the quantum wave properties of an electron to
allow transmission through a thin voltage-potential barrier.According to the laws of classical
electrodynamics, no current can flow through an insulating barrier.

But quantum mechanics says that there is a finite probability for an electron on one
side of the barrier to reach the other side. When a bias voltage is applied, there will be a
current. This tunneling current will be proportional to the bias voltage. In electrical terms, the
tunnel junction behaves as a resistor with a constant resistance.

An arrangement of two conductors with an insulating layer in between not only has a
resistance, but also a finite capacitance. The insulator is also called dielectric in this context;
the tunnel junction behaves as a capacitor.

We know that for two conductors separated by an insulator, charge and voltage are
proportional. Q = CV
where Q is the charge on the conductors, C the capacitance and V is the voltage between the
conductors.

3. Describe single electron transistor

Single Electron Transistor:
These are devices operating at the quantum/nanoscale that have switching properties
controlled by the removal or injection of a single electron; a device through which only one
electron can be transported at a time.

A single-electron transistor (SET) is a sensitive electronic device based on the Coulomb

blockade effect. In this device the electron flows through a tunnel junction between
source/drain to a quantum dot (conductive island). Moreover, the electrical potential of the
island can be tuned by a third electrode, known as the gate, which is capacitively coupled to
the island. Fig. 1 shows the basic schematic of a SET device. The conductive island is
sandwiched between two tunnel junctions,[1] which are modeled by a capacitance (CD and CS)
and a resistor (RD and RS) in parallel.

A single-electron transistor is usually made by keeping two tunnel junctions in series. The
transistor consists of a source electrode and a source drain, which is joined with the help of a
tunneling island that is also capacitively connected to a gate. The electrons can travel to
another electrode only through the insulator. There are two categories of single-electron
transistors: metallic and semiconducting. The former makes use of a metallic island, and its
electrodes using a shadow mask are mostly evaporated onto an insulator. The latter, in
contrast, depends on severing the two-dimensional electron gas that forms at the interface of
the semiconductors for the junction.
The resistance feature of a single-electron transistor depends on the size of the nanoparticles,
capacitance and electron tunneling.
Single-electron transistors have many applications. They can be used as ultrasensitive
microwave detectors and can also be used to detect infrared signals at room temperature.
They are also efficient charge sensors capable of reading spin or charge qubits. Their high
sensitivity feature allows them to be used as electrometers in experiments requiring high
levels of specificity.
Single-electron transistors are not suitable, however, for complex circuits owing to the
fluctuations present in them. Other limitations include randomness of the background charge
and difficulty in maintaining the room temperature.
4. Explain Quantum dot lasers with neat sketch
A quantum dot laser is a semiconductor laser that uses quantum dots as the active laser
medium in its light emitting region. Due to the tight confinement of charge carriers in
quantum dots, they exhibit an electronic structure similar to atoms.

Lasers fabricated from such an active media exhibit device performance that is closer to gas
lasers, and avoid some of the negative aspects of device performance associated with
traditional semiconductor lasers based on bulk or quantum well active media.
Improvements in modulation bandwidth, lasing threshold, relative intensity noise, linewidth
enhancement factor and temperature insensitivity have all been observed.
The quantum dot active region may also be engineered to operate at different wavelengths by
varying dot size and composition. This allows quantum dot lasers to be fabricated to operate
at wavelengths previously not possible using semiconductor laser technology.
The basic components of a laser are
• An active medium (gain medium which is the QD in our case) where population inversion is
created by a proper pumping mechanism. The spontaneously emitted photons at some site in
the medium stimulate emission at other sites as it travels through it.
• An energy pump source (electric power supply for QDLs)
• Two reflectors (rear mirror and output coupler) to reflect the light in phase (determined
by the length of the cavity) so that the light will be further amplified by the active medium in
each round-trip (multipass amplification). The output is partially transmitted through a
partially transmissive output coupler where the output exits as a laser beam (R = 80% in the
figure)

The active layer (QD or QW) is embedded in an optical waveguide (material with refractive
index smaller than that of the active layer). Wavelength of the emitted light is determined by
the energy levels of the QD ratherthan the band-gap energy of the dot material. Therefore, the
emission wavelength can be tuned by changing the average size of the dots. Because the
band-gap of the QD material is lower than the band gap of the surrounding medium we ensure
carrier confinement. A structure like this, were carrier confinement is realized separately from
the confinement of the optical wave, is called a separate-confinement heterostructure (SCH).
Figure 6 An ideal QD laser consists of a 3D-array of dots with equal size and shape,
ssurrounded by a higher band-gap material (confines the injected carriers). The barrier
material forms an optical waveguide with lower and upper cladding layers (n-doped and p-
doped AlGaAs in this case).