Reduction of extended defects in II-VI blue-green laser diodes

Early blue-green laser diodes based on ZnSe exhibited room temperature, continuous wave (cw) lifetimes of the order of a minute. Similar to the history of (Al,Ga)As lasers, the source of the degradation was the presence of extended crystalline defects. The dominant extended defects in the cal ly room temperature cw lasers originated as stacking faults generated at the ZnSe GaAs heterovalent nucleation event, and exhibited densities of the order of 10(6) cm(-2). In this paper a procedure is described which will reduce the density of such extended defects to the mid to low 10(3) cm(-2) over a 3 in diameter wafer.