Fabrication and characterization of dry and wet etched InGaAs/InGaAsP/InP long wavelength semiconductor lasers.

This paper presents fabrication and characterization of ridge waveguide InGaAs/InGaAsP/InP lasers with an operating wavelength of 1.5m using reactive ion etching (RIE), chemically assisted ion beam etching (CAIBE) and wet etching techniques. Characterization results of the lasers with 2m-wide waveguides are given of the two etching methods comparatively using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), L-I-V (Light-current-voltage) and spectral measurement techniques. Additionally, a comparison of wet and RIE etched lasers with 20m-wide waveguide is also discussed. Highly smooth (2.1+0.4nm rms surface roughness) and vertical (~90o) structures are obtained using RIE, in which the 2m-wide fabricated devices exhibit better performance over the CAIBE etched ones.