Homo and heteroepitaxial growth and study of orientation-patterned GaP for nonlinear frequency conversion devices

Frequency conversion in orientation-patterned quasi-phase matched materials is a leading approach for generating tunable mid and longwave coherent IR radiation for a wide variety of applications. A number of nonlinear optical materials are currently under intensive investigation. Due to their unique properties, chiefly wide IR transparency and high nonlinear susceptibility, GaAs and GaP are among the most promising. Compared to GaAs, GaP has the advantage of having higher thermal conductivity and significantly lower 2PA in the convenient pumping range of 11.7 mu m. HVPE growth of OPGaP, however, has encountered certain challenges: low quality and high price of commercially available GaP wafers; and strong parasitic nucleation during HVPE growth that reduces growth rate and aggravates layer quality, often leading to pattern overgrowth. Lessons learned from growing OPGaAs were not entirely helpful, leaving us to alternative solutions for both homoepitaxial growth and template preparation. We report repeatable one-step HVPE growth of up to 400 mu m thick OPGaP with excellent domain fidelity deposited for first time on OPGaAs templates. The templates were prepared by wafer fusion bonding or MBE assisted polarity inversion technique. A close to equilibrium growth at such a large lattice mismatch (-3.6%) is itself noteworthy, especially when previously reported attempts (growth of OPZnSe on OPGaAs templates) at much smaller mismatch (+ 0.3%) have produced limited results. Combining the advantages of the two most promising materials, GaAs and GaP, is a solution that will accelerate the development of high power, tunable laser sources for the mid and longwave IR, and THz region.