Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

An AlGaAs laser with high-quality dry etched mirrors fabricated using an ultrahigh vacuum in situ dry etching and deposition processing system

Journal Article · · IEEE J. Quant. Electron.; (United States)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/3.8560· OSTI ID:6587559
; ; ;  [1]
  1. Opto-Electronics Research Labs., NEC Corp., 4-1-1, Miyazaki, Miyamae-ku, Kawasaki 213 (JP)

Highly reliable AlGaAs lasers with dry etched mirrors are successfully fabricated with a novel ultrahigh vacuum in situ processing system, equipped with reactive ion beam etching (RIBE) and dielectric film deposition chambers. Etched mirror surfaces are protected against air-exposure contamination and nonvolatile reaction products adsorption with the in situ Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ passivation subsequent to the Cl/sub 2/ RIBE mirror formation. Ion bombardment-induced damage is repaired by thermal annealing, and the annealing effect is markedly enhanced by a contamination-free interface between the etched mirror surface and Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ passivation film. Improved lasers exhibit increase in catastrophic optical damage (COD) level and long-life operation. Their COD levels are twice as high as that for as-etched lasers and are almost the same as those for conventional cleaved lasers. In situ Auger analyses on the etched surface are performed to investigate the improvement of the laser characteristics.

OSTI ID:
6587559
Journal Information:
IEEE J. Quant. Electron.; (United States), Journal Name: IEEE J. Quant. Electron.; (United States) Vol. 24:11; ISSN IEJQA
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English