Design and fabrication of novel indium gallium arsenide and aluminum gallium indium phosphorus quantum well lasers by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition

This dissertation addresses these projects with a common focus-improving the performance of strain layer laser structures.; Techniques for fabricating a self-defined AlAs oxide-current-aperture that is applicable to very small width devices and small aperture vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are presented. InGaAs single quantum well buried heterostructure (BH) diode edge emitting lasers with a self-defined AlAs oxide-current-aperture were fabricated by a three step MOCVD growth to demonstrate the validity of the process.; A three step grown self-defined AlAs oxide-current-aperture BH VCSEL has been fabricated. This BH structure can solve the current spreading and carrier diffusion problems, which are the most serious factors of increasing the threshold current in a small size aperture planar VCSEL structure. The approach also improves the instability of very small size apertures during processing and run-to-run reproducibility of the oxidation.; We demonstrate here a 1.2μm laser emission from a GaAsP/InGaAs strain compensated single quantum well laser which enables the fabrication of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers for optical interconnection through Si wafers. Strain compensation and low temperature growth were used to extend the wavelength of emission to the longest yet achieved on GaAs in this materials system.; A 630 nm band VCSEL device structure that utilizes hybrid oxide/semiconductor DBR has been proposed.; To develop the materials necessary for fabricating the proposed devices, the properties of appropriate materials and device structures were investigated. GaInP tensile strained single quantum well (TSQW) diode lasers were fabricated. The broad area laser has a minimum threshold current density of 772A/cm 2. The AlO_x current aperture GaInP TSQW lasers have been fabricated to test the properties of these materials in oxide confined devices. The lowest threshold current is 12mA at the aperture size of 4μm with the wavelength of 637nm. We have also fabricated compressive strained GaInP MQW broad area lasers. The minimum threshold density of the laser is 898A/cm 2. The AlO_x current aperture GaInP MQW were fabricated from this material. The lowest threshold current is 44mA at the aperture size of 0.5μm with the wavelength of 635nm.