REDUCTION OF STRUCTURAL DEFECTS IN II-VI BLUE-GREEN LASER-DIODES

Early blue/green laser diodes based on ZnSe exhibited room temperature , continuous wave (cw) lifetimes of the order of a minute. Similar to the history of (Al,Ga)As lasers, the source of the degradation was the presence of extended crystalline defects. The dominant extended defec ts in the early room temperature cw lasers originated as stacking faul ts generated at the ZnSe/GaAs heterovalent nucleation event, and exhib ited densities of the order of 10(6) cm(-2). In this letter, a procedu re is described which will ensure a consistent run to run reduction of the density of such extended defects to the mid to low 10(3) cm(-2) o ver a 3 in. wafer. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.