Material Growth and Device Fabrication of GaN-Based Blue-Violet Laser Diodes

Studies on first GaN-based blue-violet laser diodes(LDs) in China mainland are reported.High quality GaN materials as well as GaN-based quantum wells laser structures are grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition method.The X-ray double-crystal diffraction rocking curve measurements show the full-width half maximum of 180" and 185" for (0002) symmetric reflection and (10(-1)2) skew reflection,respectively.A room temperature mobility of 850cm2/(V·s) is obtained for a 3μm thick GaN film.Gain guided and ridge geometry waveguide laser diodes are fabricated with cleaved facet mirrors at room temperature under pulse current injection.The lasing wavelength is 405.9nm.A threshold current density of 5kA/cm2 and an output light power over 100mW are obtained for ridge geometry waveguide laser diodes.

Novel electroabsorption modulator monolithically integrated with spot-size converter

A novel 1.55-μm spot-size converter integrated electroabsorption modulator was designed with conventional photolithography and chemical wet etching process. A ridge double-core structure was employed for the modulator, and a buried ridge double-core structure was incorporated for the spot-size converter. The passive waveguide was optically combined with a laterally tapered active waveguide to control the mode size. The figure of merit is 4.1667 dB/V(/100 μm) and the beam divergence angles in the horizontal and vertical directions were as small as 11.2 deg. and 13.0 deg., respectively.

High power AlGaInP laser diodes with zinc-diffused window mirror structure

The technology of zinc-diffusion to improve catastrophic optical damage (COD) threshold of compressively strained GaInP/AlGaInP quantum well laser diodes has been introduced. After zinc-diffusion, about 20-μm-long region at each facet of laser diode has been formed to serve as the window of the lasing light. As a result, the COD threshold has been significantly improved due to the enlargement of bandgap by the zinc-diffusion induced quantum well intermixing, compared with that of the conventional non-window structure. 40-mW continuous wave output power with the fundamental transverse mode has been realized under room temperature for the 3.5-μm-wide ridge waveguide diode. The operation current is 84 mA and the slope efficiency is 0.74 W/A at 40 mW. The lasing wavelength is 656 nm.

Design and numerical analysis for low birefringence silica on silicon waveguides

A new fabrication technology for three-dimensionally buried silica on silicon optical waveguide based on deep etching and thermal oxidation is presented. Using this method, a silicon layer is left at the side of waveguide. The stress distribution and effective refractive index are calculated by using finite element method and finite different beam propagation method, respectively. The results indicate that the stress of silica on silicon optical waveguide fabricated by this method can be matched in parallel and vertical directions and stress birefringence can be effectively reduced due to the side-silicon layer.

Design of Tapered Rib Spot-Size Converter with Double-Cladding Structure

A novel structure of spot-size converter is designed to allow low loss and large alignment tolerance between single-mode rib waveguide devices and fiber arrays theoretically. The spot-size converter consists of a tapered rib core region and a double-cladding region. Through optimizing parameters,an expanded mode field can be tightly confined in the inner cladding and thus radiation loss be reduced largely at the tapered region. The influence of refractive index and thickness of the inner cladding on coupling loss is analyzed in particular. A novel,easy method of fabricating tapered rib spot-size converter based on silicon-on-insulator material is proposed.

A 1.3μm Low-Threshold Edge-Emitting Laser with AlInAs-Oxide Confinement Layers

A 1.3μm low-threshold edge-emitting AlGaInAs multiple-quantum-well(MQW) laser with AlInAs-oxide confinement layers is fabricated.The Al-contained waveguide layers upper and low the active layers are oxidized as current-confined layers using wet-oxidation technique.This structure provides excellent current and optical confinement,resulting in 12.9mA of a low continuous wave threshold current and 0.47W/A of a high slope efficiency of per facet at room temperature for a 5-μm-wide current aperture.Compared with the ridge waveguide laser with the same-width ridge,the threshold current of the AlInAs-oxide confinement laser has decreased by 31.7% and the slope efficiency has increased a little.Both low threshold and high slope efficiency indicate that lateral current confinement can be realized by oxidizing AlInAs waveguide layers.The full width of half maximum angles of the Al-InAs-oxide confinement laser are 21.6° for the horizontal and 36.1° for the vertical,which demonstrate the ability of the AlInAs oxide in preventing the optical field from spreading laterally.

Fabrication of a SOI Based Channel-shifted Multimode Interference Coupler

A silicon-on-insulator based channel-shifted multimode interference coupler is designed and fabricated. A two dimensional beam propagation method is used to analyze the dependence of coupler′s performances on the width and length of the multimode waveguide. The device fabricated has a power shift ratio of 73 and an excess loss of about 2.2 dB. An enhancement of fabrication accuracies could further improve the coupler performances.

1.78 μm Strained InGaAs-InGaAsP-InP Distributed Feedback Quantum Well Lasers

Ridge-waveguide distributed-feedback(DFB) lasers with highly strained InGaAs/InGaAsP active regions,emitting at 1.78 μm were fabricated by low pressure metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy(LP-MOVPE) and tested.The lasers exhibited threshold current of 33 mA for 900 μm long cavities at room temperature.A maximum light output power of 8 mW from one facet and an external differential quantum efficiency of 7% were also obtained.In oddition,the side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) is 27.5 dB.

High-Power and High-Efficiency 650nm-Band AlGaInP Visible Laser Diodes Fabricated by Ion Beam Etching

High power and high-slope efficiency 650nm band real-refractive-index ridge waveguide AlGaInP laser diodes with compressive strained MQW active layer are formed by pure Ar ion beam etching process.Symmetric laser mesas with high perpendicularity,which are impossible to obtain by traditional wet etching method due to the use of a 15°-misoriented substrate,are obtained by this dry etching method.Laser diodes with 4μm wide,600μm long and 10%/90% coat are fabricated.The typical threshold current of these devices is 46mA at room temperature,and a stable fundamental-mode operation over 40mW is obtained.Very high slope efficiency of 1.4W/A at 10mW and 1.1W/A at 40mW are realized.

Narrow-beam divergence 1.55μm laser diodes with integrated self-aligned spotsize conVerter

This paper describes the high performance of narrow-beam divergence spot size converter (SSC) integrated separately confined heterostructure (SCH) LD. The upper optical confinement layer (OCL) and the butt-coupled tapered thickness waveguide were regrown simultaneously, which not only offered the separated optimization of the active region and the integrated spotsize converter, but also reduced the difficulty of the butt-joint selective regrowth. The threshold current was as low as 5.4 mA, the output power at 55 mA was 10.1 mW, the vertical and horizontal far field divergence angles were as low as 9°and 15°, and the 1-dB misalignment tolerances were 3.6 and 3.4μm, respectively.

High-speed electrooptical VOA integrated in silicon-on-insulator

In this paper, we present simulation results of an electrooptical variable optical attenuator (VOA) inte-grated in silicon-on-insulator waveguide. The device is functionally based on free carriers absorption toachieve attenuation. Beam propagation method (BPM) and two-dimensional semiconductor device simu-lation tool PISCES-Ⅱ were used to analyze the dc and transient characteristics of the device. The devicehas a response time (including rise time and fall time) less than 200 ns, much faster than the thermoopticand micro-electromechanical systems (MEMSs) based VOAs.

Integrated MMI Optical Couplers and Optical Switches in Silicon-on-Insulator Technology

Integrated multimode interference (MMI) coupler based on silicon-on-insulator(SOI) has been becoming a kind of more and more attractive device in optical systems. SiO2thin cladding layers (＜1.0 μm) can be usedin SOI waveguide due to the large index step be-tween Si and SiO2, making them compatible with VLSI technology. The design and fabrica-tion of MMI optical couplers and optical switches in SOI technology are presented in thepa-per. We demonstrated the switching time of 2 × 2 MMI-MZI thermo-optical switch is less than 20 μs:

SOI Waveguides Fabricated by Wet-Etching Method

SOI waveguides fabricated by wet-etching method are demonstrated. The single mode waveguide and 1×2 3dB BBI splitter are analyzed and designed by three dimensional beam propagation method to correct the error of effective index method and guided mode method. The devices are fabricated. Excellent performances, such as low propagation loss of -1.37dB/cm, low excess of -2.2dB, and good uniformity of 0.3dB, are achieved.

Wavelength Tuning in Two-Section Distributed Bragg Reflector Laser by Selective Intermixing of InGaAp-InGaAsP Quantum Well Structure

The two-section tunable ridge waveguide distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser fabricated by the selective intermixing of an InGaAsP-InGaAsP quantum well structure is presented. The threshold current of the laser is 51mA. The tunable range of the laser is 4.6nm, and the side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) is 40dB.

Measurement of Cavity Loss and Quasi-Fermi-Level Separation for Fabry-Perot Semiconductor Lasers

A fitting process is used to measure the cavity loss and the quasi-Fermi-level separation for Fabry- Perot semiconductor lasers. From the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) spectrum, the gain spectrum and single-pass ASE obtained by the Cassidy method are applied in the fitting process. For a 1550nm quantum well InGaAsP ridge waveguide laser, the cavity loss of about ～24cm~(-1) is obtained.