Continuous Band Heterostructures: A New Concept for Development of Low-Loss Distributed Bragg Reflectors for Optoelectronic Devices

We found a new class of heterostructures which have no discontinuities for one of the band edges and, therefore, called continuous-band heterostructures (CBHs). The promising properties of CBHs are discussed by consideration of their optical and electrical characteristics. CBH-based DBRs provide extremely low series resistance in comparison with conventional DBRs even at low level of doping that can be uniform. Low level of doping leads to low absorption. The absence of composition grading and doping profiles can simplifies growth process. Results for some apt CBHs lattice-matched to GaAs are compared with those for conventional GaAs/AlAs structures