Patent ID: 6982439

Claim:
A tunnel junction device comprising: an InP substrate, the substrate having an upper side, and a lower side opposite the upper side, and being characterized by a substrate bandgap and a substrate lattice constant; an active region disposed over the substrate, the active region having an effective bandgap configured to generate light at a lasing wavelength in response to injected charge; and first tunnel junction layer of a first semiconductor material disposed over the active region, wherein the first semiconductor material includes aluminum (Al), gallium (Ga), arsenic (As) and antimony (Sb), the first tunnel junction layer having an effective bandgap greater than the photon energy of the lasing wavelength at room temperature by at least 80 milli electron Volts; a first dopant disposed in the first semiconductor material to form a p-type tunnel junction layer with a carbon concentration in a range from about 1.5×10 19 cm −3 to 3×10 20 cm −3 ; and a second tunnel junction layer of a second semiconductor material juxtaposed with the first tunnel junction layer to form a tunnel junction structure, wherein the second semiconductor material includes indium (In), gallium (Ga), arsenic (As) and one of aluminum (Al) and phosphorous (P), wherein at least one of the tunnel layers has a strain matched within +/−2% of the substrate lattice constant.