CONTINUOUS-WAVE OPERATION AND MIRROR LOSS OF A U-SHAPED GAAS/ALGAAS LASER DIODE WITH 2 TOTALLY REFLECTING MIRRORS

A U-shaped GaAs/AlGaAs laser diode (LD) with totally reflecting mirrors is fabricated. Reactive fast atom beam etching technique with Cl2 gas is applied to fabricate the totally reflecting mirrors. Continuous-wave operation of the U-shaped LD with two totally reflecting mirrors is achieved using a graded-index separate-confinement-heterostructure single quantum well laser wafer. A threshold current of 75 mA and a light output power of over 5 mW are obtained with a 40-μm-wide and 300-μm-long mesa stripe structure. Totally reflecting mirror loss is estimated from measurements of the threshold current density for different cavity lengths. The loss of the totally reflecting mirror is about 0.95 dB per reflection.