Double-heterostructure photonic crystal lasers with lower thresholds and higher slope efficiencies obtained by quantum well intermixing.

In order to reduce the optical absorption loss, an array of double-heterostructure photonic crystal microcavity lasers was fabricated in which much of the photonic crystal mirror region was disordered by quantum well intermixing. In characterizing these devices, we obtained more than a factor of two increase in slope efficiencies and more than 20% reduction in threshold pump powers compared to devices that were not intermixed.