The quality and yield of GaAs-based ridge waveguide devices fabricated at MIT Lincoln Laboratory were negatively impacted by the random lot-to-lot appearance of blisters in the front-side contact metal. The blisters signaled compromised adhesion between the front-side contact metal, underlying SiO 2 dielectric coating, and semiconductor surface. A thermal-anneal procedure developed for the fabrication of GaAs slab coupled optical waveguide (SCOW) ridge waveguide devices stabilizes the SiO 2 dielectric coating by means of outgassing and stress reduction. This process eliminates a primary source of adhesion loss, as well as blister generation, and thereby significantly improves device yield. Stoney's equation was used to analyze stress-induced bow in device wafers fabricated using this stabilization procedure. This analysis suggests that changes in wafer bow contribute to the incidence of metal blisters in SCOW devices.
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