Talk:Quantum well laser

It seems that a lot of the development and characterization of quantum-well lasers took place in the late '80s and early-mid '90s. Perhaps a good section would be the current state of the technology - maybe including a discussion of the limitations of the QWLs, and whether they entered mainstream production, or why not. Anyone have any suggested references? Xjxj324 (talk) 04:18, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

There are multiple forms of quantum well lasers. Responding to the comment from 21October2011, advances have been made extending the emission wavelength range to longer wavelengths, by means of quantum cascade lasers in particular, and to shorter wavelengths, by means of III-N (nitride) based lasers. The nomenclature "quantum well lasers" starts however with the GaAs-based and InP-based lasers emitting in wavelength ranges centered near 0.8 and 1.55 microns wavelength respectively.

I had edited this page five years earlier, in 2013, to clarify the subject of quantum well lasers, in cooperation with colleagues.

Recently in 2018 it was brought to my attention that changes had been made in 2017 (a year earlier). These changes added a paragraph on "the internet" with references to work by Joanna Maria Vandenberg, who did early work to apply x-ray diffraction technology to characterize the thin film epitaxial layers used to fabricate quantum well lasers, particularly multiquantum well lasers or laser incorporation superlattice structures.

So-called high-resolution x-ray diffraction (HRXRD) techniques, sometimes called XRD techniques, are now routine characterization techniques used in the development and production of semiconductor optoelectronic devices of all types. Commercially produced HRXRD tools such as those manufactured by Bede Scientific, and others, are widely deployed at laboratories around the world and used on a daily basis. However, these are only one of several types of characterization techniques routinely utilized on a daily basis to characterize semiconductor laser materials. Others include scanning electron microscopy, spectroscopic ellipsometry, electrochemical profiling, scanning photoluminescence, and length-studies of broad-area-laser efficiency. This is on1y a partial list.

All of the aforementioned characterization techniques, and others not listed, may be considered key to the development of quantum well lasers of long lifetimes (the 25-year mean time to failure (MTTF) mentioned in the 2017-added paragraph).

However, the purpose of the quantum well laser article on Wikipedia should not be to herald the many many materials and device characterization techniques. It should be to describe the quantum well laser itself and the key innovations that have enabled the quantum well laser to revolutionize diverse fields including fiber optic telecommunications, machine tool manufacture, therapeutic and diagnostic medicine, and others in the future that are still under development.

Consequently with all due respect to the authors of the edits applied to the quantum well laser Wikipedia page in August 2017, I am contemplating new edits to the page and would welcome comments. These edits would eliminate the extravagant credit currently given to the work of Joanna Maria Vandenberg at Bell Labs, and the intimation that workers who innovated quantum well lasers were actually working on the internet, per se. That was an application of their work but not the only one and that was not the discipline in which they toiled.

Finally, the article as it was edited in August 2017 refers to TAT-8, the first transatlantic communications cable that utilized fiber optic telecommunications technology. The edit incorrectly asserts that TAT-8 utilized quantum well lasers. It did not as should be well-known to all Bell Labs researchers in the field, at the time.

Jabeles (talk) 12:25, 18 September 2018 (UTC)