Defect engineering for high-power 780 nm AlGaAs laser diodes

Defect engineering is carried out to determine optimum growth conditions for highly reliable high-power 780 nm AlGaAs laser diodes (LDs) using deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS). The DLTS results reveal that the defect density of the Al0.48Ga0.52As cladding layer depended heavily on growth temperature and AsH3 flow but that of the Al0.1Ga0.9As active layer depended mostly on the growth rates of the active layer. As a result of layer optimization at growth condition by DLTS, a record high output power of 250 mW was obtained at an operating current as low as 129.6 mA under room temperature continuous wave (CW) operation.