Optoelectronic device employing at least one semiconductor heterojunction thyristor for producing variable electrical/optical delay

Abstract

An optoelectronic integrated circuit includes a resonant cavity formed on a substrate. A heterojunction thyristor device is formed in the resonant cavity and operates to detect an input optical pulse (or input electrical pulse) and produce an output optical pulse via laser emission in response to the detected input pulse. The heterojunction thyristor device includes a channel region that is coupled to a current source that draws current from the channel region. Time delay between the input pulse and output optical pulse may be varied by configuring the current source to draw constant current from the channel region and modulating the intensity of the input pulse, or by varying the amount of current drawn from the channel region by the current source. The heterojunction thyristor device may be formed from a multilayer structure of group III-V materials, or from a multilayer structure of strained silicon materials. A plurality of such heterojunction thyristor based optoelectronic integrated circuits can be used to provide variable pulse delay over a plurality of channels. In addition, the heterojunction thyristor device is easily integrated with other optoelectronic devices formed from the same growth structure to form monolithic optoelectronic integrated circuits suitable for many diverse applications, including phased array communication systems.