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AssigneeThe Regents of the University of California
InventorsLarry A. Coldren, Ryan L. Naone
Estimating the term…
A process for forming a Vertical Cavity Laser (VCL) structure that includes using an intermixing technique involving an high temperature annealing operation to overcome lateral carrier diffusion away from the center of the active region of the VCL. Degrading effects of the high temperature annealing are avoided by first restricting the dopant associated with the p-type Bragg reflector (DBR) region of the VCL to low diffusivity types such as carbon, thus eliminating a thermally-induced diffusion that occurs when other p-type dopants such as beryllium (Be), Zinc (Zn), or Magnesium (Mg) are employed. Further, the oxide created to act as an aperture in a conventional VCL structure is removed leaving behind an air gap having the shape of the oxide aperture. It was found that the degrading effects associated with annealing the VCL structure were minimized using carbon as the p-type dopant and air gap apertures. In addition, it was determined that the annealed, air gap apertured, VCL provided the same optical loss properties previously attributed only to an un-annealed, oxide-apertured, VCL—but without sacrificing efficiency due to lateral carrier diffusion.
A vertical cavity laser structure comprising:
A process of forming a vertical cavity laser including an oxidation region, a first distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) region having at least some oxidizable material overlying the oxidation region which is doped with a p-type dopant, and a second DBR region underlying the oxidation region which is doped with un n-type dopant said process comprising the actions of:
A process of forming a vertical cavity laser including an active region formed of materials for providing gain to the laser mode, an oxidation region overlying the active region formed of semiconductor materials comprising a relatively high percentage of aluminum exceeding about 95 percent, a first distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) region overlying the oxidation region formed of semiconductor materials comprising pairs of layers having different indexes of refraction, one of which containing a relatively small percentage of aluminum not exceeding about 10 percent and the other containing a relatively high percentage of aluminum exceeding about 95 percent and which pairs are both doped with a p-type dopant, and a second DBR region underlying the active region which is doped with an n-type dopant, said process comprising the actions of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.