GaN-based high power blue-violet laser diodes

The epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) technique is an important technology for improving the characteristics of GaN-based laser diodes (LDs). The photoluminescence intensities from GaN and GaInN multiple quantum well active layers in the ELO-GaN wing region were found to be higher than those in the seed region. This indicates that the density of dislocations in the wing region could be reduced significantly. This is evidenced by dislocation densities of less than 10(6) cm(-2) as determined from transmission emission microscopy and etching-pit-density measurements. The cleaved facets of 10(6) on ELO-GaN and sapphire were observed by atomic forced microscopy. Although the roughness of GaN cleaved facets on sapphire were high (Ra > 10 nm), the roughness in the ELO-GaN wing region was found to be as smooth as that of GaAs cleaved facet (Ra < 1 nm). The characteristics of LDs on ELO-GaN were found to be superior to those on sapphire as a result of smoother facets and lower dislocation densities.