Integrated Optical Pumping of Cr & Ti-Doped Sapphire Substrates With III-V Nitride Materials

摘要

The goal of this proposal was to investigate the potential advantages of integrating III-V nitride structures on doped sapphire substrates and doped sapphire waveguide structures. III-V Nitride structures are typically grown on undoped synthetic sapphire or silicon carbide neither of which efficiently luminescence. However, Cr:Sapphire and especially Ti:Sapphire are very useful solid state laser materials used in ruby lasers (694 nm) and tunable (660-1100) Ti:sapphire, thus very efficient optical pumping powers on the order of several watts and supporting infrastructure to remove the heat is required. By confining the optical pump energy to the waveguide, simultaneous pump and signal beam confinement could potentially lead to a reduction in lasing threshold. Utilizing the red emission from the Cr in the sapphire could also permit the construction of white light LEDs. Ultimately, an integrated III- V Nitride optical pump for Ti:Sapphire could lead to the development of ultra compact tunable vibronic lasers for spectroscopy applications such as chemical and biological sensing.