All-optical digitizing of laser transmission through thin-film GaAs on glass

Abstract

All-optical transmission switching is realized by solely interfacing laser emissions at 532 nm and 633 nm in thin-film GaAs on glass. Specifically, from the viewpoint of material requirements, the switching concept is extremely undemanding. The results reveal that the inherent application potential of absorbing materials in digital photonics is so far not fully comprehended and thin films may play a part in future all-optical concepts beyond expectations.

Texture and surface analysis of thin-film GaAs on glass formed by pulsed-laser deposition

“…That peculiar texture, which provides plenty of possibilities to alter the local electronic film state via laser irradiation, explains the readiness of the material to serve for all-optical laser digitizer as we have demonstrated in Refs. [11] and [12].…”

“…Meanwhile, we demonstrated that the photocurrent of PLD GaAs follows the crystalline density of states [10]. Furthermore, we achieved low-power all-optical laser digitizing with the potential to operate in the THz regime with PLD GaAs on glass [11,12]. Film textures, which enable such fast electronic alterations due to laser irradiation are matter of broader interest and it is clearly of importance to investigate the film morphology in detail.…”

Photosensitive hetero-pairing of p-GaAs/n-Si by pulsed-laser deposition

“…Although first attempts already took place in the 1980s [5], the formation of GaAs-on-Si with PLD is, in comparison with MBE and MOCVD, considerably lesser exploited and almost no data were available when we started our activities. Meanwhile, we have demonstrated that nanosecond PLD forms photosensitive thin-film GaAs on glass and Si [6][7][8][9] and that the films can be used for novel all-optical logic operations [10,11].…”

Effect of thickness on the microstructural, optoelectronic and morphological properties of electron beam evaporated ZnTe films

“…Utilization of ZnTe thin films in device development were reported by the realization of LED prototypes [11,12], high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells [13], and terahertz (THz) devices [14]. In some reports the concept of laser crossing and all-optical laser transmission digitizing with GaAs [15,16], CdS [17] and InP has been successfully demonstrated [18]. In an earlier report on electron beam evaporated ZnTe films, the optical and dielectric properties were discussed [19].…”