Modeling the Lateral Wet Oxidation ofAlxGa1−xAsinto Arbitrary Mesa Geometries

Abstract

The lateral wet oxidation of thin layers of Al-rich semiconductors is of prime importance for the fabrication of electrically injected vertical-cavity lasers, and in many areas of nanophotonics. The authors introduce a reaction-diffusion model of oxidation-front propagation based on the chemical oxidation processes, one that includes the effects of anisotropies and applies to any (possibly nonconvex) initial geometry. Numerical simulations show excellent agreement with experiment. This method is general and opens the way to the fine control of wet-oxidation fronts, which has numerous practical applications in terms of device creation.