Researchers at UCSB have developed a method of fabricating a semiconductor laser incorporating buried grating mirrors and photonic crystals, and more particularly, novel structures grown on substrates patterned by these gratings and photonic crystals. Each patterned layer may be engineered to act as a mirror, optical confinement layer, grating, wavelength selective element, beam shaping element, etc. for the active layers. These novel laser structures rely on active layers directly grown on patterned substrates with multiple lateral epitaxial overgrowth (LEO) layers to improve contact structures and reduce waveguiding loss by contact electrodes.

File Number: 18968 

Web site: http://techtransfer.universityofcalifornia.edu/...

Other Information:

Background

Nitride lasers are extremely difficult to manufacture, so there is a need for improved methods of fabricating horizontal emitting, vertical emitting, beam shaped and distributed feedback lasers by growth over a patterned substrate with multiple overgrowth.