Abstract

In-situ anisotropic etch and regrowth opens up the possibilities of cresting new processes and structures specially for material systems with high surface recombination velocities. This is specially true of the In- GaAs/GaAs/AlGaAs material system with high aluminum content. For realizing low threshold, high efficiency small diameter vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL), it is essential to be able to etch anisotropic columns and regrow on the side-walls to bury the active region.¹ Since the aluminum content in these structures is high, growth and etching mechanism compatible with an ultra high vacuum allow the process to be integrated without exposing the material system to oxygen. Using the melt-back technique, LPE can regrow on high aluminum content layers but because of the difficulty of melt-back control small features will he washed out. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques, because of their lack of ultra-high vacuum compatibility, run into problems with materials with aluminum content larger than 70%. For these purposes and possible fabrication of quantum wires and dots, electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) etching and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) regrowth are well suited. We report the first cw room temperature operation of buried AIGaAs/GaAs/lnGaAs laser diode by these techniques.

© 1993 Optical Society of America