Modulation characteristics of high speed (f/sub -3 dB/=20 GHz) tunneling injection InP/InGaAsP 1.55 /spl mu/m ridge waveguide lasers extracted from optical and electrical measurements

High-performance multiquantum-well 1.55 /spl mu/m InP-based tunneling injection lasers are fabricated using a conventional single mode ridge waveguide fabrication process and characterized. The lasers consist of an eight quantum-well strain-compensated gain region and a 30-/spl Aring/ InP tunneling barrier. The bandwidth of these lasers is measured to be 20 GHz with a damping limited bandwidth extracted from the K-factor (determined from optical modulation measurements) of 26 GHz. To our knowledge, this is the highest measured bandwidth recorded for an InP-based simple ridge waveguide structure. The differential gain is measured to be as high as 1/spl times/10/sup -15/ cm/sup 2/, with a measured gain compression coefficient /spl epsiv/ of 5/spl times/10/sup -17/ cm/sup 3/. It is shown that the K-factor can also be extracted solely from measurements of the small signal electrical impedance. The carrier escape time /spl tau//sub esc/ is determined to be 0.5 ns, independent of bias. This high frequency performance is achieved with a very simple device structure at room temperature under constant drive currents.