| This thesis presents novel techniques and applications of nonplanar chemical vapor deposition (CVD) for optoelectronic materials and devices. Specifically, nonplanar organometallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE) employing a shadow mask has been developed for the fabrication of integrated optoelectronic structures. Shadow masked OMVPE (SM-OMVPE) is currently the only technique known to produce thick, nonplanar layers of single crystal material without macroscopic faceting. By the use of SM-OMVPE, various microlenses, micromirrors and novel devices have been designed fabricated and tested. Shadow masked microlenses with record short focal lengths have been produced. High quality microlens arrays with accurate control of lens diameter, sagitta, focal length, astigmatism and position have been designed, fabricated and tested. The author has shown that precise three-dimensional control during crystal growth can be employed to construct useful optoelectronic structures in a reproducible manner.; This work also presents novel techniques for the fabrication of shadow masks. A high aluminum-concentration spacer layer and chemical recipes for the removal of epitaxial shadow masks are reported. In addition, the first reusable shadow mask constructed by reactive ion etching has been utilized for the growth of shadow masked structures. Direct fusion wafer bonding of silicon shadow masks was first developed by the author and has proven to be a robust, clean and reliable technique for mask placement.; The application of shadow masked growth to vertical cavity semiconductor lasers (VCSELs) was initiated in this work. Microlenses were designed for top-emitting VCSELs to provide focusing of the output beam and these designs are currently being fabricated at Sandia National Laboratories. Furthermore, by introducing curvature to the distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) mirrors, a high power single mode VCSEL has been designed. The author has grown the first concentrically-variable semiconductor Bragg reflector, the initial requirement for fabrication of this device. |
