Mid-infrared InAs/InP quantum-dot lasers

Yangqian Wang; Hui Jia; Jae-Seong Park; Haotian Zeng; Igor P. Marko; Matthew Bentley; Khalil El Hajraoui; Shangfeng Liu; Bo Yang; Calum Dear; Mengxun Bai; Huiwen Deng; Chong Chen; Jiajing Yuan; Jun Li; Kongming Liu; Dominic A. Duffy; Zhao Yan; Zihao Wang; Stephen J. Sweeney; Qiandong Zhuang; Quentin M. Ramasse; Siming Chen; Mingchu Tang; Qiang Li; Alwyn Seeds; Huiyun Liu

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-02167-4

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Mid-infrared InAs/InP quantum-dot lasers

Original Articles

- Mid-infrared InAs/InP quantum-dot lasers
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 15, Issue 3, Pages: 766-777(2026)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, London, UK
  2.James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
  3.Physics Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
  4.SuperSTEM, SciTech Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus, Daresbury, UK
  5.York NanoCentre & Department of Physics, University of York, York, UK
  6.School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
  7.Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
  8.School of Chemical and Process Engineering and School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
- Author bio：
  
  Hui Jia (hui.jia@ucl.ac.uk)
  Jae-Seong Park (jae-seong.park@ucl.ac.uk)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-02167-4
  CLC：
- Received：15 August 2025，
  
  Revised：2025-11-18，
  
  Accepted：11 December 2025，
  
  Online First：12 January 2026，
  
  Published：31 March 2026
- Accepted：
Scan QR Code
Wang, Y. Q. et al. Mid-infrared InAs/InP quantum-dot lasers. Light: Science & Applications, 15, 766-777 (2026).
DOI：

Wang, Y. Q. et al. Mid-infrared InAs/InP quantum-dot lasers. Light: Science & Applications, 15, 766-777 (2026). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-02167-4.

摘要

Abstract

Mid-infrared semiconductor lasers operating in the 2.0–5.0 μm spectral range play an important role for various applications

including trace-gas detection

biomedical analysis

and free-space optical communication. InP-based quantum-well (QW) and quantum-dash (Qdash) lasers are promising alternatives to conventional GaSb-based QW lasers because of their lower cost and mature fabrication infrastructure. However

they suffer from high threshold current density (

) and limited operation temperatures. InAs/InP quantum-dot (QD) lasers theoretically offer lower

owing to their three-dimensional carrier confinement. Nevertheless

achieving high-density

uniform InAs/InP QDs with sufficient gain for lasing over 2 μm remains a major challenge. Here

we report the first demonstration of mid-infrared InAs/InP QD lasers emitting beyond 2 μm. Five-stack InAs/In

0.532

0.468

As/InP QDs grown by molecular-beam epitaxy exhibit room-temperature photoluminescence at 2.04 μm. Edge-emitting lasers achieve lasing at 2.018 μm with a low

of 589 A cm

−2

and a maximum operation temperature of 50 ℃. Notably

the

per layer (118 A cm

−2

) is the lowest ever reported for room-temperature InP-based mid-infrared lasers

outperforming QW/Qdash counterparts. These results pave the way for a new class of low-cost

high-performance mid-

infrared light sources using InAs/InP QDs

marking a notable step forward in the development of mid-infrared semiconductor lasers.

关键词

Keywords

references

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