A new chemical etching technique for formation of cavity facets of (GaAl)As lasers

Author

Wada, Masaru ; Hamada, Ken ; Shibutani, Takao ; Shimizu, Hirokazu ; Kume, Masahiro ; Itoh, Kunio ; Kano, Gota ; Teramoto, Iwao

Author_Institution

Matsushita Electronics Corporation, Takatsuki, Osaka, Japan

Volume

21

Issue

6

fYear

1985

fDate

6/1/1985 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

658

Lastpage

662

Abstract

A new chemical etching technique which offers excellent cavity facets of Ga1-xAlxAs lasers is reported. This technique is based on our finding that the crystallographic anisotropy in the conventional etching process of Ga1-xAlxAs multilayers depends strongly on the AlAs mode fraction $x$ in every layer. A suitable combination of the mole fractions in the multilayer is therefore a key factor for obtaining practically vertical walls with sufficient smoothness and flatness as laser cavity facets. In fact, the reflectivity of the etched facet obtained is 28 percent, being compatible to that in the conventional cleaved facets. As a result, a CW operation with threshold current as low as 28 mA and external quantum efficiency as high as 24 percent per facet has been attained with high reproducibility.

Keywords

CW lasers; Gallium materials/lasers; Laser resonators; Materials processing; Chemical lasers; Crystallography; Etching; Gallium arsenide; Laser modes; Nonhomogeneous media; Reflectivity; Substrates; Threshold current; Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.1985.1072704

Filename

1072704