Ridge waveguide lasers emitting near 1 μm have been made on a GaAs substrate using a single GaInAs strained-layer quantum well in a GaAs/AlGaAs graded-index separate confinement heterostructure. The epitaxial layers were grown by low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition, and the ridge waveguide was fabricated by chemically assisted ion beam etching. The lasers have threshold currents near 17 mA with fundamental lateral mode operation to five times this value. These are the first reported strained-layer current-injection lasers to run cw at room temperature; they operate, without bonding, to greater than 24 mW/facet (100 mA dc), and have 18 mW/facet (80 mA dc) lifetimes in excess of 144 h.
Stable in-phase coupled supermode operation of a ridge waveguide laser array is achieved by introducing distributed saturable absorption regions in subordinate laser cavities. Diffraction-limited single-lobed emission beams were attained up to 27 mW per laser stripe, and threshold current for the array was kept near 10 mA per laser stripe.
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