We report the fabrication and comparison of buried heterostructure and
ridge waveguide 0.98 mum lasers with strained InGaAs quantum wells, s
tepped InGaAsP confinement layers, and InGaP claddings. The buried het
erostructure (BH) lasers exhibit superior performance with lower thres
hold and higher power. We demonstrate a BH laser with 4.4 mA threshold
current, 77% differential quantum efficiency, 196 mW of output power,
and 150 K characteristic temperature. No catastrophic optical damage
is observed on the laser facets, although the facets were not coated o
r treated.