REVIEW ARTICLES | FOCUS

PUBLISHED ONLINE: 28 JUNE 2012 | DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2012.143

Mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers

Yu Yao1†, Anthony J. Hoffman2†* and Claire F. Gmachl3

Mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers are semiconductor injection lasers whose active core implements a multiple-quantum-
well structure. Relying on a designed staircase of intersubband transitions allows free choice of emission wavelength and,
in contrast with diode lasers, a low transparency point that is similar to a classical, atomic four-level laser system. In recent
years, this design flexibility has expanded the achievable wavelength range of quantum cascade lasers to ~3–25  μm and the
terahertz regime, and provided exemplary improvements in overall performance. Quantum cascade lasers are rapidly becom-
ing practical mid-infrared sources for a variety of applications such as trace-chemical sensing, health monitoring and infrared
countermeasures. In this Review we focus on the two major areas of recent improvement: power and power efficiency, and
spectral performance.

Q
uantum cascade (QC) lasers, invented in 1994 by J.  Faist,
F. Capasso, and co-workers1, have progressed rapidly owing to
their intrinsic design potential. These semiconductor injection
lasers are based on intersubband transitions in multiple-quantum-
well structures. The design of alternating wells and barriers, often
numbering 500–1,000 (Fig.  1), allows great flexibility for a creative
engineer to explore2–9. Having exploited the benefits of mature, estab-
lished materials — InGaAs/AlInAs alloys on InP and later GaAs/
AlGaAs on GaAs — thanks to the communications and photonics
industries, progress in the development of these new semiconductor
lasers was determined first by the imagination of device researchers
and later by the pull of application requirements10. In the years fol-
lowing the first demonstration of the QC laser 1, researchers repeat-
edly demonstrated the versatility enabled by quantum engineering,
including demonstrations of lasers simultaneously emitting at mul-
tiple wavelengths11, lasers with integrated sum-frequency nonlineari-
ties12 and lasers capable of broadband tuning 13. These new devices
with extraordinary emission properties were created by changing
the quantum-mechanical structure of the active region. Progress in
output power and operating temperature was also made in conven-
tional devices as the active region designs were refined14–19. Before
2002, when continuous-wave (CW) operation at room temperature
was achieved, QC lasers were limited to low-duty-cycle pulsed opera-
tion at room temperature20. However, even as device performance
improved, most lasers exhibited very low (<1%) conversion efficien-
cies between electrical power and optical power — a metric known
as the wall plug efficiency (WPE). Low WPEs limited the use of QC
lasers in applications such as portable sensors and infrared counter-
measures, where the power consumption of the laser was a major con-
straint. For applications already employing QC lasers, high WPE was
seen as a desirable improvement. Although low threshold and high
optical output power were always clear goals (or at least desirable fea-
tures), only over the past five years has the power efficiency become
an essential device parameter. This Review focuses first on power effi-
ciency, as this generally also results in high optical output power and
is usually concomitant with a low-threshold current density.
High power and power efficiency performance
The first QC laser had a WPE of less than 0.15% in pulsed operation
at 10 K, meaning that less than 0.15% of the input electrical power
was converted to optical power from the device1. Although WPE
values improved slightly as better lasers were designed, little work
was done with the principal aim of improving the parameter, and
the WPE remained of the order of 1% at room temperature for most
QC lasers. A low WPE puts heavy demands on system designers;
for example, an application requiring 1 W of optical output power
from a laser with a WPE of 1% would require 100 W of input power.
The system requirements become even more demanding when one
considers that any electrical energy not contributing to light output
must be dissipated as heat. As the number of proposed applications
for QC technology grew, so did the need for improving the WPE.
Fig. 2a shows a plot of the reported WPE over time for both pulsed
and CW operation1,14–47.
The WPE is a complicated parameter that depends on factors
such as the temperature of the device, the quantum-mechanical
structure of the energy levels and various device characteristics such
as length and waveguide loss48. The total efficiency of the device can
be approximated as the product of four device efficiencies: opti-
cal, current, internal and voltage efficiencies. Optical efficiency
describes the emission of photons from the laser cavity before they
are absorbed by the waveguide; current efficiency describes how far
above threshold the laser is operated; internal efficiency describes
the properties of the quantum design, such as the radiative and
non-radiative recombination rates of the designated optical tran-
sition, thermal backfilling of the lower laser level and thermionic
emission out of the quantum structure into the continuum states;
and voltage efficiency describes the fraction of the voltage drop
over the device that contributes to photon generation48. Designing
lasers that maximize these four efficiencies is essential to improving
device performance.
These four device efficiencies are all functions of the photon
energy, which makes the WPE dependent on the wavelength. A
reduction in the WPE for longer-wavelength lasers was dem-
onstrated both experimentally and theoretically by considering
the effect of wavelength on physical quantities such as oscillator
strength, free-carrier absorption and optimal energy separation
between the lower laser level and the injector state48,49. The majority
of the effort towards improving the WPE has been concerned with
devices operating at wavelengths around 4.6 μm. Devices designed
for this wavelength window are driven primarily by security appli-
cations such as infrared countermeasures, and benefit from high-
quality growth of strain-balanced, InP-based heterostructures.
These are the devices that are emphasized in this Review.
Significant advances in the WPE were achieved by further explor-
ing the design space and re-examining common design strategies.
One strategy focused on reducing the voltage defect, the voltage

1
School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. 2Department of Electrical Engineering, University
of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA. 3Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA. †These
two authors contributed equally to this work, and significantly more so than the third author. *e-mail: ajhoffman@nd.edu

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 FOCUS | REVIEW ARTICLES
NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2012.143 FOCUS | REVIEW ARTICLES
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 28 JUNE 2012 | DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2012.143

a c

Injector
Electroplated gold
10 μm Active
region
SiN insulation
Gap in plating to Injector
facilitate cleaving
3

b Active core

Active

520 meV
region

60 nm

Figure 1 | Concept of a QC laser. a, Photograph of a laser bar with four QC lasers (left, courtesy of Frank Wojciechowski) and scanning electron microscopy
image of the front facet of a QC laser (right). b, High-resolution transmission electron microscopy image of a QC laser, showing four periods of active
regions and injectors. c, Simplified schematic of the conduction band structure for a basic QC laser, where the laser transition is between sub-bands 3 and 2.

drop in the active region that does not contribute to the genera-
tion of light34,39,43. One particularly successful design achieved this
at both the laser turn-on and turn-off voltages43; by ensuring a low
voltage defect at these two operating points, the overall electrical
efficiency of the device was high and the differential resistance of
the device was low. This study also achieved high differential gain
by employing a short period length, which allowed denser stack-
ing of the amplifying quantum wells. The high differential gain
enabled the fabrication of devices with larger mirror losses — and
hence increased optical efficiency — while minimizing the impact
of increased photon emission on the threshold current. This device
achieved a record WPE of more than 50% at 40 K in pulsed opera-
tion, thus generating more light than heat 43.
A second strategy developed in tandem with the above approach
also achieved a pulsed WPE of 50% under similar operating con-
ditions by compensating for the effect of interface roughness on
the transport of electrons inside the device44. Theoretical models
using interface roughness as the relevant in-plane scattering time
showed that broadening due to interface roughness was the lim-
iting factor in resonant tunnelling between the injector and the
upper laser level, thus making it the limiting factor in laser per-
formance50. These results suggested that increasing the coupling
strength between the injector and the upper laser level would
result in improved gain, which contradicted the previous notion
that increased coupling would reduce laser performance due to a
broader gain spectrum. The conduction band energy diagram for
such a device is shown in Fig. 2b. Light-current–voltage measure-
ments and current-versus-WPE for an ultra-strong coupling laser
developed by Liu et al.44 are shown in Fig. 2c and Fig. 2d, respec-
tively. These ultra-strong coupling lasers consistently achieved
WPEs in the range of 40–50% below 160 K in pulsed mode, owing
to improvements in both the current and internal efficiencies44.
This new understanding of transport in QC lasers is significant to
the field because the results are broadly applicable and should lead
to improvements in most active-core designs at all temperatures50.
The aforementioned designs achieved record WPEs by operat-
ing at low temperatures in low-duty-cycle pulsed mode. However,
many applications require lasers that operate at room temperature
or in CW mode. Such requirements result in higher active-core
temperatures due to an increase in heat sink temperature and/or
self-heating 51–53, causing a degradation in laser performance that is
most clearly observed as an exponential increase in the threshold
current and, somewhat less strongly, as an exponential decrease in
the optical slope efficiency of the laser. As a result, both the current
efficiency and internal efficiency are negatively impacted. The pri-
mary causes for this reduction in laser performance are a reduction
in the gain of the laser due to backfilling of the lower laser level,
thermionic emission from bound states to the continuum, and
increased phonon scattering rates53. Despite these additional chal-
lenges, appropriate active-region designs can be used to mitigate
some of the effects of higher operating temperatures.
The design considerations for lasers intended to operate at high
temperatures or in CW mode are necessarily different from those
operating at low temperatures. For example, small voltage defects
such as those used in pulsed, low-temperature lasers to achieve
record WPEs are not viable design choices because the voltage
defect plays an important role in minimizing thermal back-filling
of the lower laser level53,54. Instead, the active core must incorporate
a larger voltage defect for devices operating at higher temperatures.
Strategies to increase the performance of these devices are multi-
faceted: reduce the sensitivity of the laser to temperature changes
and minimize temperature changes due to self-heating 42,55,56.
Reducing the temperature sensitivity of QC laser performance
has been achieved using a variety of active-region designs. One par-
ticularly effective design incorporates two strategies to achieve high
performance. First, shallow wells and barriers are used to increase
the separation between the upper laser level and the energy state
immediately above it, thus reducing carrier injection into unwanted
states. Second, tall barrier inserts are used in the injector region to
increase the confinement of the optical transition and minimize
carrier loss into the continuum states. The effect of temperature
on the threshold of a QC laser can be described by J(T)  =  J0eT/T0,
where J0 is a constant and T0 is the characteristic temperature of
the device. High values of T0 are therefore desirable. This device has
a characteristic temperature (T0 ~ 383 K) that is greater than that
of high-performance QC lasers incorporating more conventional
designs (T0 ~ 200 K)55. The highest-performing QC laser operating
at room temperature in CW mode has been demonstrated using this
shallow-well architecture; the device operated with a peak WPE of
21% and had a maximum output power of 5.1 W (ref. 46). In addi-
tion to reducing the temperature sensitivity of the laser, these high-
performance devices also benefit from superb thermal packaging.

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a b 1,800
5 E = 102 kV cm−1
CW
40
45
1,400
20 85
Wall plug efficiency (%)

19 meV

Heat sink temperatue (K)

125
0 1,000

Energy (meV)
165

40 Pulsed 205
600
245
20
285
200
0 320
1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 0 15 30 45 60 75
Year Distance (nm)

c Current density (kA cm−2) d Current density (kA cm−2)

0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
16 12
9K 50 9K
14 80 K
80 K 10
120 K 120 K
12 160 K 40 160 K
200 K 8 200 K
10
Voltage (V)

Power (W)

250 K 250 K
300 K 30 300 K
6
8
20
6 4

4 10
2
2
0 0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
Current (A) Current (A)

Figure 2 | WPE. a, Total WPE of selected lasers from the literature at various heat sink temperatures for pulsed and CW operation. Devices were selected
from highly cited articles in years 1994–2012. The colour of the symbol indicates the temperature of the heat sink. Symbols outlined in black represent
devices with one or both facets coated. For non-coated lasers, the output power from a single facet was doubled to obtain the total device efficiency. For
research that did not directly report the WPE, the value was estimated using the available data; estimates were required for many of the early devices. The
error for the estimated WPE is primarily due to an uncertainty in the voltage applied to the device at peak WPE, which is estimated to be about 30%. In
most cases, the estimated WPE is larger than the actual WPE because the ‘turn-on’ voltage, which is lower than the actual voltage applied to the device,
was used for the calculation. b, Conduction-band diagram for an ‘ultrastrong coupling’ QC laser. c, Pulsed light-current–voltage measurements for an
‘ultrastrong coupling’ laser at various heat sink temperatures. The device was 13.6 μm × 2.9 mm and the total output power was obtained by doubling the
output power from a single facet. d, WPE versus current for the device shown in b. Figure b–d reproduced with permission from ref. 44, © 2010 NPG.

A complementary strategy that has consistently been employed in and thus the power budget is limited. In such cases, it is desirable to
high-performance lasers is to minimize the temperature change by scale down the input and output powers of these high-performance
effectively removing heat from the active core35,37,41,42,46. The active core devices while maintaining a high WPE. Low-power-consumption
can be subject to significant heating during high-duty-cycle or CW QC lasers are realized using short, narrow cavities with low-power
operation, and proper thermal management is essential for ensuring active regions to ensure that the total power required for lasing
high-performance operation57. Laser performance when operating in is low 59–62. Because shorter cavities have larger photon emission
CW mode is greatly improved by fabricating the devices as buried- rates, the mirror loss of the laser must be modified to maintain a
ridge lasers using high-quality processing, employing proper growth low threshold current. One strategy for achieving this is to use high
conditions and using an InP regrowth technique (owing to the high reflectance and partial-high-reflectance coatings on the back and
thermal conductivity of InP)20,35,36,58. Mounting the device epitaxial- front facets, respectively. Such lasers have been demonstrated in
side-down on diamond or some other high-thermal-conductivity CW mode at room temperature with a threshold power consump-
heat sink further improves heat removal from the active core by mini- tion of 0.83  W. Conventional designs, in contrast, have threshold
mizing the thermal resistance between the heat-generating active core power consumptions of 1.5–3  W (ref.  60). Recently, even lower
and the heat-removing heat sink35. Finally, external cooling mecha- powers were reached by optimizing the doping density in the active
nisms such as thermoelectric coolers can be used to extract heat from region. These devices were fabricated as short-cavity, distributed
the package and regulate the temperature of the active core. feedback (DFB) lasers with antireflection coatings on the front and
A direct way of minimizing heating is to reduce the amount back facets to suppress Fabry–Pérot modes. These devices have
of power required by the laser. This strategy is particularly useful threshold power consumptions of around 0.7 W when operated in
for applications such as point sensors, where optical powers of the CW mode at room temperature. Their emission spectrum is single
order of a few milliwatts are sufficient, or for applications such as mode with a side-mode suppression ratio of 30  dB, which makes
portable network sensors, where the laser is powered by a battery them particularly useful for portable spectroscopic applications61.

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NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2012.143 FOCUS | REVIEW ARTICLES
a c 1.0

5
10 μm 1 mm Experiment Simulation
Surface grating

4
0.8

Intensity (normalized)
3
Highly doped cap layer
Upper cladding

2
Active region 0.6

Angle (°)
1
Bottom cladding

−5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0
Substrate
0.4
Buried grating Surface grating II
0.2

0
−5 −4 −3 −2 1 0 1 2 3 4 5
Angle (°)

b d
Laser waveguide top view

θ
Laser ridge
L+
Air hole P−
P+
1 mm L−

Laser facet
Intensity (log scale)

1
e
0.1 DFB master oscillator Single-pass power amplifier

0.01

1,200 1,150 1,100 1,050

Wavenumber (cm−1) Output facet with antireflection coating

Figure 3 | DFB QC lasers. a, Schematic of DFB QC laser structures. b, Scanning electron microscopy picture of a DFB QC laser array90 and output laser
spectra88. c, Scanning electron microscopy image of a two-dimensional ring cavity DFB QC laser array (top-left) and the far-field of the laser output beam
(bottom-right)89. d, Schematic of a photonic-crystal DFB QC laser. e, Schematic of a QC laser master oscillator power amplifier with simulated light
intensity distribution92. Figure reproduced with permission from: b (spectra) ref. 88, © 2009 IEEE; b (inset), ref. 90, © 2010 SPIE; c (left), ref. 89, © 2011
AIP; c (right), ref. 77, © 2010 AIP; e, ref. 92, © 2011 OSA.

High spectral performance CW operation at room temperature. An alternative surface grating

For many applications in spectroscopy, particularly trace-gas
sensing, single-mode narrow-linewidth tunable mid-infrared
lasers are desirable to achieve high selectivity, high sensitivity and
multiple-species detection. The most common approaches for
achieving tunable single-mode operation are DFB QC lasers63,64
and external cavity (EC) QC lasers65. Versatile cavity designs66–70
have also shown the potential to achieve single-mode lasing spec-
tra. This section focuses on DFB QC lasers and EC QC lasers, both
of which have shown rapid progress in terms of laser performance
and tuning range.
DFB QC lasers are fabricated by integrating a Bragg grating into
the laser waveguide. Repeated scattering from a Bragg grating favours
a single wavelength — the Bragg wavelength — which is determined
by the grating period. There are two ways to introduce gratings into
QC laser waveguides: a surface grating in the highly doped cap layer
(Fig. 3a, top)63; or a buried grating close to the active region, sand-
wiched between the waveguide core and the top cladding layers
(Fig. 3a, bottom-left)64,71,72. Applying a grating to the laser ridge side-
walls has also been attempted73–75 but is not as common. A surface
grating is easier to fabricate than a buried grating, which requires
high-quality upper waveguide cladding regrowth after fabrication.
However, surface gratings require larger grating depths to achieve
the necessary coupling strength, as the grating is further away from
the laser mode centred in the active region. Furthermore, this type
of surface grating provides complex coupling; that is, a modulation
in both refractive index and loss16,76. Although this helps to break the
degeneracy of the two Bragg resonance modes and thus enforce sin-
gle-mode operation, the additional loss makes it difficult to achieve
technique is to remove the metal from the grooves (Fig. 3a, bottom-
right), which reduces the loss at the metal–semiconductor interface77.
The first room-temperature CW DFB QC laser was dem-
onstrated using a buried grating in 200571. Since then, steady
improvements have been made towards higher output powers,
high-temperature operation and low power consumption72,78–81.
Buried gratings were generally regarded as the only way to achieve
room-temperature CW DFB QC lasers until recently, when the
design principle of surface grating was revisited82. Taking into
account the coupling between the dielectric waveguide mode and
the grating surface plasmonic mode allowed researchers to predict
the grating coupling coefficient and waveguide loss more accurately
than previous models based on coupled-mode theory 63,67. The opti-
mized structure exhibits a shallow grating with a complex-coupling
coefficient 83–86. Researchers have not only demonstrated room-tem-
perature CW operation, but also boosted the output power level
to above the watt-level47,86. However, the weak coupling strength
requires a high-quality antireflective coating on at least one facet
to maintain single-mode operation at injection currents high above
the lasing threshold85.
Another important feature of the DFB QC laser is that its emis-
sion wavelength can be continuously tuned by changing the heat
sink temperature or injection current 79,85, which in turn heats the
laser. Both methods of tuning lead to a change in the effective
refractive index of the laser waveguide and thus shift the reso-
nance wavelengths of the Bragg gratings, with a tuning rate of
around 0.1–0.2 cm–1 K–1. This capability allows DFB QC lasers to be
tuned across the absorption peaks of different gas species, thereby

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a b c Wavelength (μm)
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
0.2 2012
I E
DFB TPR
112
RDFB CB89 EC DAU
111
0.1 2011 EC CC108
M
5 EC DAU 111

0 2010 EC CB106

Energy (eV)
4 DFB BC88
EC TPR101
−0.1 1 2 3 2009 EC BC 5 stack105
CL lens
EC TPR97 EC BC97

Year
−0.2 2008
QCL DFB BC 115
2007 EC BC113
−0.3
0
2006 EC BC 2 stack
94
GR
−0.4
EC BC102
600 800 1,000 1,200 2005
EC BC114
d Distance (Å) 2004
10 5 CO NH3
1.0 CO2 NO
8 4 H2O NO2

Gain (normalized)
0.8
O3 N2O

(cm/mole ×e−19)
Intensity (a.u.)

6 0.6 3 CH4 SO2

Intensity
C2H4
4 0.4 2
0.2
2 1
0
0 0
1,950 2,000 2,050 2,100 2,150 2,200 2,250 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500
Wavenumber (cm−1) Wavenumber (cm−1)

Figure 4 | EC QC lasers, broadband QC laser design and wavelength tuning ranges achieved in QC lasers. a, Schematic of EC QC laser in a ‘Littrow’
configuration (M: mirror; GR: grating reflector; CL: collimating lens). b, Conduction-band diagram of the continuum-to-continuum QC laser design45.
c, Top: Wavelength tuning ranges achieved with DFB arrays and EC lasers based on different QC laser designs. Red indicates CW operation; blue indicates
pulsed operation. Bottom: HITRAN simulated absorption spectra for several molecules in the mid-infrared wavelength range of 4–12 μm. TPR, BC, CB, CC
and DAU are different types of QC laser designs: TPR, two-phonon resonance; BC, bound-to-continuum; CB, continuum-to-bound; CC, continuum-to-
continuum; DAU, dual upper state. EC, DFB and RDFB are tuning methods of laser spectra: EC, external cavity; DFB, linear DFB laser array; RDFB, DFB ring
laser array. d, EC tuning laser spectra of the continuum-to-continuum QC laser and laser gain spectra at the same biased electric field108. The intensity of
the highest frequency component (grey) is magnified by a factor of 1,000 for clarity. Figure b reproduced with permission from ref. 45, © 2010 AIP.

providing high sensitivity in the detection of trace gases. The maxi-
mum tuning range of a single DFB QC laser is limited, however, by
both the technologically feasible temperature swing and the tuning
mismatch between the laser mode and the peak gain. Fully exploit-
ing the gain bandwidth of a QC gain chip requires multiple DFB QC
lasers with different grating periods to cover a broader wavelength
range87. By integrating an array of 24 DFB lasers, a wavelength
tuning range of 220  cm−1 (8.0–9.8  μm) has been demonstrated
(Fig. 3b)88 using a bound-to-continuum active-region design. Using
a two-dimensional array of ring cavity second order DFB QC lasers,
a wavelength coverage of 180 cm−1 around 8.2 μm (1,220 cm–1) was
achieved with a surface-emitting laser beam at a very small diverg-
ing angle of less than 3º (Fig. 3c)89. The availability of such on-chip
widely tunable single-laser sources provides great opportunity for
achieving ultracompact mid-infrared spectrometers90.
Photonic-crystal DFB QC lasers91 and QC laser master oscil-
lator power amplifiers92 have been employed to meet the require-
ments of high peak power (tens of watts) and high brightness for
particular applications, with promising results. Figure  3d shows
the schematic of a photonic-crystal DFB QC laser, in which a pho-
tonic crystal lattice is incorporated into the laser waveguide at a
tilted angle θ with respect to the laser facets. The four coupling
directions (P+, P−, L+ and L−) cause the laser beam to propagate
in a zigzag pattern. The DFB selects the resonance wavelength and
the lateral coupling helps to establish lateral coherence over a wide
ridge width (several hundred micrometers, or even up to 1 mm)93.
A nearly diffraction-limited beam has been obtained with a total
peak power of 34 W from a 400-μm-wide laser ridge91. With high
fabrication accuracy, this method is a very good solution for high-
power brightness, single-mode lasers in pulsed mode operation.
However, the wide ridges lead to severe heating in CW operation
and are therefore unsuitable for CW room-temperature lasers
given the performance of today's laser gain chips. The QC laser
master oscillator power amplifier incorporates a DFB QC laser as
the master oscillator and a power amplifier at the output 92 (Fig. 3e).
The two sections are separately pumped, which allows the DFB
laser to be operated with moderate injection current to maintain
single-mode emission while ensuring a large injection current in
the amplifier section. A high-quality antireflective coating is essen-
tial for increasing the self-lasing threshold and allowing higher
transmission gain in the amplifier region.
Although DFB QC lasers provide compact, reliable single-mode
tunable laser emission, EC QC lasers are the most commonly used
widely tunable single-mode sources across numerous successful
applications94–100, owing to their rapid progress in tunability, output
power 101 and CW operation at room temperature101,102. Figure  4a
shows one typical configuration — the ‘Littrow’ configuration — for
EC QC lasers. The set-up is carefully aligned to ensure that the col-
limated laser output beam is incident on the diffraction grating. The
first-order diffraction is then coupled back into the laser cavity while
the zeroth-order diffraction provides the output laser beam. This sys-
tem is essentially a coupled cavity system formed by two cavities; that
is, the Fabry–Pérot cavity formed by the laser’s front and back fac-
ets, and the grating cavity formed by the back facet and the grating.
Detailed analyses have been performed into laser mode selection in
such a configuration103,104.

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NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2012.143
By rotating the angle of the grating, one can change the grat-
ing reflection spectra and thus tune the laser emission wavelength.
However, this results in step-wise tuning to discrete wavelengths at
which the Fabry–Pérot cavity and grating-cavity mode coincide65.
Achieving continuous tuning requires complete mode tracking. A
piezo-activated mode-tracking system that provides independent
control of the EC length and diffraction grating angle was imple-
mented to achieve mode-hop-free tuning of EC QC lasers97,103. A
spectral resolution of <0.001 cm–1 (<30 MHz, limited by the laser
linewidth) was obtained in CW operation, which is enough to
resolve the narrow absorption spectra of trace gases97.
A major advantage of EC QC lasers is their potential to cover a
wavelength range as wide as that allowed by the gain medium using
a single QC laser chip. The maximum tuning range of a QC laser
achieved so far is more than 430  cm–1 — over 39% of the centre
frequency — in an EC configuration employing a heterogeneous
QC laser design105. The key to a wide tuning range, besides an opti-
mized, well-aligned EC set-up, is a broad gain bandwidth. However,
the conventional QC laser gain medium has an intrinsically narrow
linewidth because it is based on the intersubband transition. The
heterogeneous design covers a broad wavelength range by integrat-
ing many sub-stacks at different wavelengths. This technique has
been used to achieve a supercontinuum lasing spectrum of 6–8 μm
in a single device13, thanks to its inhomogeneous broadening nature.
This is an advantage for applications that require broadband laser
spectra. However, for single-mode widely tunable sources, a homo-
geneously broadened gain medium is preferred because it helps to
maintain the single-mode emission at the selected wavelength, even
at high pumping currents. Another issue with the heterogeneous
cascade design is that it sacrifices the laser gain at individual wave-
lengths because the confinement factor for each sub-stack becomes
smaller as the number of sub-stacks increases, while the total core
thickness of the laser is roughly maintained. Several techniques
have been developed during the search for a homogeneously broad-
ened QC gain medium with a wide gain spectra and high laser per-
formance, including bound-to-continuum19, continuum-to-bound/
continuum45,106 and dual-upper laser state designs107.
Bound-to-continuum QC lasers have multiple transitions from
the upper laser state to several lower laser states19. This design
simultaneously provides a short upper laser lifetime and a short
depopulation time from the lower laser state — a compromise that
leads to a laser performance that comparable to the conventional
two-phonon resonance design at longer wavelengths (>7–8  μm).
For wavelengths shorter than 5  μm, however, the smaller energy
gap between the injector states and the continuum above the quan-
tum wells becomes detrimental to laser performance because the
upper laser state is close to the band edge of the barriers, which
leads to a higher probability of carrier leakage into the continuum
states. Another challenge for achieving broad tuning in lasers based
on bound-to-continuum design is the potentially unsymmetrical,
multi-peaked shape of the gain spectrum, due to the difference in
oscillator strengths for individual transitions. In QC laser designs
based on continuum-to-bound106 and continuum-to-continuum45
(Fig.  4b) active regions, ultra-strong coupling between injector
states and the upper/lower laser states provides multiple laser tran-
sitions, which contribute to a broadband gain spectrum. The strong
coupling facilitates ultrafast carrier transport from the injector to
the upper laser states, which compensates for the decrease in gain
coefficient as a result of the broadening. Continuum-to-bound106
and continuum-to-continuum45 designs are therefore promising
techniques for achieving high-performance QC lasers with a broad
gain spectrum. The homogeneous broadening mechanism is verified
through the broad EC tuning range (350 cm–1, 90% of the gain spec-
tral full width at half maximum, Fig. 4d) and strong gain-clamping
effect 108. The dual-upper laser state design is characterized by two
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© 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
FOCUS | REVIEW ARTICLES
strongly coupled upper laser states and a very broad gain spectra
(570 cm–1, around 40% of the emission frequency)109,110. Broad tun-
ing ranges have been demonstrated in both pulsed (321 cm–1) and
CW operation (248 cm–1)111.
Figure 4c presents a summary of recent results for single-mode
broad-tuning QC lasers using an EC configuration or DFB arrays
based on different QC laser designs88,89,94,97,101,102,104–106,108,111–115. Given
the recent progress on broadband gain designs and tuning tech-
niques, we believe there is still much room for expanding the tuning
range and improving the laser performance for single-mode tunable
mid-infrared light sources based on QC structures.
Outlook
This Review has highlighted the rapid progress of QC lasers in areas
of power efficiency, optical output power and spectral performance,
as determined by wide single-mode tunability. Canvassing the field
of mid-infrared QC laser research, an obvious speculation concerns
the areas of major future progress of the field. Several open ques-
tions invite major research investment. Fundamental issues include
the development of sub-picosecond, high-pulse-energy pulsed QC
lasers, and the development of QC lasers for (or, more specifically,
the application of designed intersubband transitions to) materials
systems that are very different from conventional group iii–v semi-
conductor alloys. Applied challenges include developing QC lasers
whose power specifications are suitable for consumer electronics.
Such achievements would highlight the significant potential of QC
lasers and open up new fields for research and development.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge collaborations with colleagues at Princeton University and
associated with the NSF Engineering Research Center MIRTHE. A.J.H. thanks S. Howard
for valuable discussions. They also acknowledge partial support by MIRTHE (NSF-ERC)
and DTRA.
Additional information
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.J.H.