Metalorganic chemical vapor deposition growth development for ultraviolet vertical cavity surface emitting lasers

Abstract

This thesis describes the development of III--nitride materials for ultraviolet (UV) vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers or VCSELs. The goal of this research is to develop UV VCSELs targeting a peak emission wavelength of λ = 369.5 nm for chip-scale Yb atomic clock application. Epitaxial structures for these devices are grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and several material analysis techniques were employed to characterize these structures. A traditional electrical injection VCSEL consists of several key structure components including, top and bottom distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) for forming the vertical cavity, spacer layers for optical mode alignment as well as carrier transport, and multi-quantum wells (MQWs) for photon generation. With the growth and fabrication technology developed to date, this study focuses on solving p-spacer vertical hole transport issue and growth for high quality n-side DBR. By integrating these developed technology, VCSEL under optical pumping as well as electrically inject micro--cavity light--emitting diodes (MCLEDs) will be presented.