Temperature-engineered growth of low-threshold lasers on nonplanar substrates

The temperature engineered growth (TEG) technique for the single step fabrication of buried heterostructure lasers is reviewed. GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well lasers and strained InGaAs/GaAs quantum well lasers have been fabricated with threshold current of 2 mA and 3 mA for the GaAs and InGaAs systems, respectively. We show that the use of strained quantum wells resulted in better collection of carriers and higher external quantum efficiency (88%). The growth of strained InGaAs/GaAs lasers integrated with Bragg reflectors utilizing the TEG technique is shown to be a promising technique for obtaining low threshold current surface emitting lasers incorporating a folded cavity.