Interband cascade LEDs grown on silicon substrates

Mid-IR emitters grown on silicon will be simpler to process and less expensive to manufacture than devices grown on GaSb. Here we report interband cascade light emitting devices grown on 4° offcut silicon. While core heating limited cw emission from epi-up devices on GaSb, dissipation via the substrate allowed devices on silicon to operate to much higher currents. Accounting for differences in architecture, the efficiency was approximately 75% of that for the best previous epi-down ICLEDs grown on GaSb. At 100 mA, 200-µm-diameter mesas produced 184 µW cw at T = 25 °C and 140 µW at 85 °C.