Postgrowth tuning of semiconductor vertical cavities formultiple-wavelength laser arrays

摘要

Combined lateral-vertical oxidation of AlGaAs is investigated as anmeans of tuning the resonant wavelength of a semiconductor microcavitynafter the epitaxial growth. It is shown that this technique can providenarrays with a wavelength spread equal to the cavity's free spectralnrange with a single postgrowth processing step. Design issues fornmultiple-wavelength vertical-cavity laser arrays using this postgrowthntuning technique are discussed, comparing the performance of devicesnwith all-semiconductor and partially or totally oxidized Bragg mirrors.nExperimental results are presented on arrays with a 48-nm lasing spannaround 970 nm, using partially and totally oxidized mirrors