The ability to preserve a grating profile during epitaxial overgrowth
is vital to the design and operation of devices such as planar wavegui
de-coupled Bragg-resonant filters. Intentional preservation of rectang
ular-patterned InP gratings during gas source molecular beam epitaxial
overgrowth has been accomplished. The use of a low temperature atomic
hydrogen-assisted oxide removal technique alleviates the dependence o
n elevated temperatures for desorption of the native oxide, and is cru
cial to the preservation of the patterned profile. Confirmation of the
overgrown grating fidelity is demonstrated via scanning electron micr
oscopy and triple axis x-ray diffractometry. (C) 1997 American Institu
te of Physics.