PHOTOPUMPED ANTIGUIDE BLUE LASERS FABRICATED FROM MOLECULAR-BEAM EPITAXIAL ZNSE ON GAAS

Room temperature photopumped laser oscillation at 469 nm has been achieved in ZnSe thin film leaky waveguide (antiguide) resonators with threshold pump intensities of about 350 kW/cm2. The 1-mu-m thick ZnSe was grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a (100) GaAs substrate. Data on the differential quantum efficiency and its dependence on pump wavelength are presented and compared with that of a bulk ZnSe laser. Mechanisms responsible for their different dependences are discussed. It is shown that the TE0 optical mode loss in these antiguide structures can be quite low, creating the possibility of fabricating short wavelength edge light emitting diodes (ELED's) with high radiance.