High-brightness semiconductor lasers fabricated with improved dry-etching technology for ultra-smooth laser facets

An improved dry-etching process has been developed for the fabrication of semiconductor laser diodes with dry-etched resonator mirrors. This technique offers lots of new applications, e.g. the fabrication of unstable-resonator lasers and monolithic optoelectronic integration. However, there are strict requirements for the quality of the dry-etched laser mirrors. The fabrication method of these facets includes two steps, the fabrication of a suitable etch mask and the mirror etching process itself.