Micro dry etching process for vertical cavity surface emitting lasers

Abstract

Abstract : A microcavity surface emitting (SE) laser is very attractive for future optoelectronic applications such as optical parallel processing and optical interconnections. In order to realize such a low threshold SE laser, micro-fabrication providing a low damage etch is one of important issues. We have introduced a reactive ion etch (RIE) and reactive ion beam etch (RIBE) technique to fabricate a tiny dielectric multilayer reflector and micro-resonator for surface emitting lasers. In most of SE laser structures, a SiO2/TiO2 dielectric multilayer reflector or semiconductor multilayer mirror is used as high reflective mirrors. However, it has been difficult to fabricate the microcavity with steep side walls by wet chemical etching since each material has different etching rates. Dry etch techniques for multilayer structures, especially for GaInAsP/InP semiconductors, have not been fully studied.