Continuous room-temperature operation of electrically pumped quantum-dot microcylinder lasers

We report continuous-wave (cw) room-temperature operation of electrically p umped AlGaAs/GaAs microcylinder lasers using self-assembled InAs/GaAs quant um dots (QDs) as the active material. The threshold currents are lower than those of similar devices with an InGaAs quantum well fabricated for compar ison. This is discussed in terms of nonradiative surface recombination at t he sidewall of the resonator which has less influence in the case of the QD devices since the lateral carrier confinement suppresses lateral carrier d iffusion. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.