Abstract
Hydrostatic pressure and spontaneous emission techniques have been used to examine the important recombination mechanisms in type-I GaInAsSb/GaSb quantum well lasers. High pressure results indicate that Auger recombination dominates the threshold current of 2.11 mu m and 2.37 mu m devices and is the origin of their temperature sensitivity around room temperature. While the characteristics of the 2.37 mu m devices are much improved by the suppression of the CHSH Auger process, since its spin-orbit splitting energy is greater than its band gap, other important Auger processes such as CHHL and CHCC persist. In the larger band gap 2.11 mu m devices, an increase in threshold current with pressure is observed suggesting that CHSH Auger is present in these devices at atmospheric pressure and contributes to performance degradation at these shorter wavelengths.