Degradation studies of long-lived injection lasers for fiber-optic communications

Reliability investigations of double heterostructure (Al,Ga)As injection lasers intended for fiber optical communications are reviewed. Accelerated aging is discussed and the extrapolations are shown to be consistent with an extrapolation energy of ∼0.7 eV. The importance of dark line defects, uniform degradation, and gradual mirror damage for long-lived lasers is assessed. The feasibility of room temperature mean-time-to-failure in excess of one million hours is demonstrated and remaining problems described.