138
1, JANUARY 1, 2017
Optically Pumped DFB Lasers Based on GaN Using
10th-Order Laterally Coupled Surface Gratings
Ji Hye Kang, Martin Martens, Hans Wenzel, Veit Hoffmann, Wilfred John,
Sven Einfeldt, Tim Wernicke, and Michael Kneissl
Abstract— An optically pumped GaN-based laser structure
with 10th-order laterally coupled surface grating is demon-
strated. The fabrication involved i-line photolithography and dry
etching, avoiding more complex technologies such as multiple
epitaxy steps. The lasing threshold of the laterally coupled
distributed-feedback (LC-DFB) laser was similar to that of a
ridge waveguide Fabry–Perot (RW-FP) laser. Single-peak emis-
sion with a full width at half maximum of 0.06 nm at 404.2 nm
was achieved for LC-DFB lasers. In contrast to the RW-FP lasers,
the LC-DFB laser is shown to exhibit a smaller shift of the
emission wavelength with temperature.
Index Terms— AlInGaN, distributed-feedback laser diodes,
laterally coupled surface gratings.
I. I NTRODUCTION
L ASER diodes with a stable emission wavelength and
a narrow linewidth in the blue-violet spectral region
are promising light sources for spectroscopy, atomic clocks,
medical applications, laser displays as well as for undersea
optical communications [1]. Although optically or electrically
pumped GaN-based lasers with low-order (1st , 2nd or 3rd -
order) Bragg gratings have already been reported, the real-
ization of such gratings is technically difficult due to the
short emission wavelength and the resulting need for small
dimensions of the gratings for these lasers, for example a
period of 80 nm for the 1st -order Bragg grating [2]–[5].
Furthermore, to achieve single mode operation, the overlap
between the grating and the optical mode is critical. There-
fore, previously reported DFB lasers required the fabrication
of a short period grating in close distance to the active
region using high-precision e-beam lithography preferably in
Manuscript received September 19, 2016; revised November 2, 2016;
accepted November 11, 2016. Date of publication November 17, 2016; date
of current version December 30, 2016. This work was supported in part
by the European Fund for Regional Development of the European Union
in the framework of the Berlin-Polish joint project brilliant high power
violet emitting laser diodes (BriVi), administrated by the Investitionsbank
Berlin within the “Program to promote research, innovation and technologies”
(ProFIT) under Contract 10157699 and in part by the German Research
Foundation in the Collaborative Research Centre 787.
J. H. Kang, H. Wenzel, V. Hoffmann, W. John, and S. Einfeldt are
with the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut, Leibniz-Institut für Höchstfrequen-
ztechnik, 12489 Berlin, Germany (e-mail: ji-hye.kang@fbh-berlin.de;
hans.wenzel@fbh-berlin.de; veit.hoffmann@fbh-berlin.de; wilfred.john@
fbh-berlin.de; sven.einfeldt@fbh-berlin.de).
M. Martens and T. Wernicke are with the Institut für Festkörper-
physik, Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany (e-mail:
martens@mailbox.tu-berlin.de; tim.wernicke@physik.tu-berlin.de).
M. Kneissl is with the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut, Leibniz-Institut für Höch-
stfrequenztechnik, 12489 Berlin, Germany, and also with the Institut für
Festkörperphysik, Technische Universität Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany
(e-mail: kneissl@physik.tu-berlin.de).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2016.2630078
1041-1135 © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO.
conjunction with a two-step epitaxial growth process of high
cleanliness [2]–[4].
In contrast to buried Bragg gratings, where the coupling
efficiency drops dramatically with increasing Bragg order, the
reflectivity of surface gratings having a large index contrast
decreases only slowly if the duty cycle of the grating and
the grating depth are properly chosen [7]. Therefore, the
fabrication of high-order (> 3rd ) surface Bragg gratings by
conventional i-line photolithography (resolution of 300 nm)
is proposed to be comparably effective as long as the
grating has a large duty cycle of > 90%. It is possible
even though a high aspect ratio requires structures with
a width of 80 nm by employing surface gratings with
V-shaped grooves. These grooves exhibit a high aspect
ratio of the grating at the tips of the grooves where the
mode intensity is maximum. These features can be realized
by exploiting redeposition effects from sputtering during
inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching using heavy ions
such as BCl3 [6]. Such V-shaped grooves have been used
in GaAs laser diodes [7]–[9]. In this letter, we present the
simulation, fabrication, and operation of optically pumped
InGaN/GaN multiple-quantum-well (MQW) distributed-
feedback lasers with 10th -order surface Bragg gratings,
which are laterally coupled to a ridge waveguide (LC-DFB).
For comparison conventional ridge waveguide Fabry-
Perot (RW-FP) lasers without grating were fabricated as
well. In contrast to other published DFB laser concepts, the
fabrication of LC-DFB lasers requires neither an elaborated
e-beam lithography nor a multistep growth process but results
in a competitive device performance.
II. T HEORETICAL C ONSIDERATIONS
Since the reflectance of a high-order Bragg grating sen-
sitively depends on the duty cycle and the etch depth of
the grating, a precise optical simulation is required to opti-
mize the grating structure [10]. The laser structure in this
experiment was comprised of an approximately 1 μm thick
Al0.06 Ga0.94 N:Si lower cladding layer (i), a lower waveguide
consisting of 75 nm GaN and 40 nm In0.01Ga0.99 N:Si (ii),
a MQW with three 3.5 nm wide In0.1 Ga0.9 N quantum wells
and 7.5 nm wide In0.03Ga0.97 N:Si barriers (iii), an upper
waveguide layer of unintentionally doped (n.i.d.) 45 nm
In0.01Ga0.99 N:n.i.d. and 105 nm GaN (iv), an approximately
400 nm wide Al0.06 Ga0.94 N:n.i.d. upper cladding layer (v) and
a Al0.12 Ga0.88 N cap layer, as shown in Fig 1(b).
The vertical intensity distribution of the fundamental
waveguide mode of the unetched region of the laser structure is
shown in Fig. 1(a). The refractive indices used were nAlGaN =
2.473, nGaN = 2.545, nMQW = 2.652, nIn0.01Ga0.99N =
2.561 [11], as shown in Fig. 1(a) too. The reflectivity (R) and
transmissivity (T ) of 10th -order Bragg gratings etched from
KANG et al.: OPTICALLY PUMPED DFB LASERS BASED ON GaN
Fig. 1. (a) Refractive index profile and resulting vertical intensity distribution
of the fundamental optical mode in the unetched region of the 405 nm laser
structure, (b) a schematic image of Bragg grating and the laser structure and
(c) simulated maximum reflectivities of a 600 μm long, 10th -order Bragg
grating with rectangular shaped grooves as a function of the vertical position
of groove tip and the duty cycle of the grating.
the top in the described laser structure were calculated using
the bidirectional mode expansion tool CAMFR [7]–[9]. The
conventional coupled-wave theory using a coupling coefficient
obtained by perturbation theory is only valid for “weak” Bragg
gratings and fails for surface gratings having a large index
contrast between semiconductor and insulator (or air) similarly
as for metal surface gratings [12].
For simplicity, in the simulation the grating was assumed
to consist of rectangular shaped grooves and to be covered
by SiNx (nSiNx = 1.994). Note that V-shaped grooves can be
approximated by rectangular shaped grooves having an effec-
tive width slightly larger than the bottom width of the V-shaped
grooves which was also checked by simulations [13], [14].
According to the Bragg condition λ = 2n e f f /m, where
n e f f is the longitudinally averaged effective refractive index of
the heterostructure,  is the grating period, and m is the order
of the Bragg grating, the period of 10th -order Bragg grating
is calculated. For a given period  = 802 nm, both the duty
cycle D = ( − o)/, where o is the width of the etched
grooves, as well as the depth d of the grooves (i.e. vertical
position of the groove tip with respect to the epitaxial surface)
in the laser structure were varied. A reflectivity spectrum
R(λ) for every value pair of D and d was calculated and the
maximum was determined. Further details of the theory and
of CAMFR can be found in Ref. [15]. A greyscale contour
plot of the maximum reflectivity of a 600 μm long 10th -order
Bragg grating is shown in Fig. 1(b) as a function of D and d.
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139
High values of R > 0.9 (corresponding to coupling coefficients
κ > 30 cm−1 for a 600 μm long grating [13]) were obtained
for D = 0.93 ∼ 0.99 and etch depths in the range of 150 nm
above the topmost quantum well to 150 nm below the bottom
quantum well. When the etching of the grating stops above
the upper waveguide layer (vertical position > −400 nm), the
relative overlap of the optical mode with the grating is small
(around 13 %), as shown in Fig 1(a). As a result, R is low and
T is large. On the other hand, R is small for D < 0.9 even if
the grating is etched deep enough due to large radiation losses
(L = 1 − R − T ). Based on the simulation results, a 10th -order
grating with an etch depth of 600 nm (i.e. around 10 nm below
the bottom quantum well) and a groove width of < 80 nm is
favored.
III. E XPERIMENTAL D ETAILS
The laser structure with an emission wavelength of around
405 nm described above was grown on a 4 μm thick GaN(:Si)
buffer on c-plane sapphire substrate by metal organic vapor
phase epitaxy. V-shaped gratings were defined alongside a
2 μm wide ridge (WR ) by i-line wafer stepper photolithogra-
phy and reactive ion etching. The 700 nm thick photo resist
pattern had a period of 802 nm and openings of 400 nm. Dry
etching was performed by ICP using BCl3 gas at a rather low
pressure of 0.17 Pa. The wafer was covered with 250 nm-thick
plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposited SiNx and a 1.5 μm
wide opening (Wo ) was structured on the ridge to define the
aperture for later optical pumping. The wafer was cleaved into
1.6 mm-long bars. The front facet was antireflection coated
(R AR < 0.2 %) whereas the back-facet was high-reflection
coated (R H R = 97%) for LC-DFB lasers. As a reference,
RW-FP lasers with similar ridge width and SiNx structure as
the LC-DFB lasers were fabricated on the same wafer with a
low-reflection (R L R = 18%) coating on the front facet and a
high-reflection coating (R H R = 97%) on the back-facet.
The laser bars were mounted by thermal paste (Keratherm,
KP92) on a holder with variable temperature and optically
pumped with a pulsed ArF laser operated at a pulse repetition
rate of 50 Hz and a pulse width of 5 ns with an emission wave-
length of 193 nm. The excitation beam with a width of 15 μm
was focused on the laser bar and pumped the complete length
of the cavity. The emission of the optically pumped laser was
fed into a low-resolution grating spectrometer (resolution of
0.3 nm). From the emission spectra of the lasers the total
emission intensity and the spectral shift with temperature and
pumping power were determined by integrating the spectra and
by extracting their centers of gravity, respectively. Moreover,
high-resolution emission spectra of the lasers were measured at
room temperature using a spectrometer with a focal length of
320 mm and 1800 g/mm grating in 2nd -order with a resolution
of 0.03 nm to judge the single mode operation.
IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
Figure 2 shows a scanning electron microscope (SEM)
bird’s eye view image of the LC-DFB laser with the gratings
alongside the ridge. As shown in the inset of Fig. 2, the
grating has a period of  = 802 nm, an etch depth of
d = 600 nm, a slant angle of 20° and a width of the groove
tip of around 10 nm. The effective duty cycle of perfectly
V-shaped grating is mainly defined by the angle of the side-
walls which is only tuned by the chamber pressure. According
to our experience the reproducibility of the angle is in the
140
Fig. 2. Bird’s eye-view SEM image of the LC-DFB structure, with a cross
section SEM image of the V-shaped grooves as inset.
Fig. 3. (a) Dependence of the laser peak intensity on the pump power
density. High-resolution emission spectra of the RW-FP laser (at 20 % above
threshold) (b) and LC-DFB laser (at 18 % above threshold) (c).
range of 5 %. Referring to Fig. 1(b), these numbers correspond
to a reflectivity of R > 0.9.
The comparable threshold power densities were found to
be around 3.5 MW/cm2 for the RW-FP and LC-DFB at room
temperature, as shown in Fig. 3(a). This result demonstrates
convincingly that no significant additional loss is generated
by the grating. Moreover, the emission wavelength shift with
increase of the excitation power density was not resolved, i.e. it
has to be below 0.3 nm (not shown here).
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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO. 1, JANUARY 1, 2017
Fig. 4. Temperature dependence of the emission peak wavelength of a RW-FP
and a LC-DFB laser.
High-resolution emission spectra of a RW-FP and a
LC-DFB laser are shown in Fig. 3 (b) and (c). The spectrum
of the RW-FP laser consists of multiple peaks at 20 % above
threshold whose relative intensities vary with the excitation
power (not shown here). The complex spectrum results from
the superposition of numerous longitudinal modes, which
could not be resolved in detail due to the long laser cavity.
In contrast, the LC-DFB laser spectrum shows a single peak
at 404.2 nm with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of
0.06 nm at 18 % above threshold. Since the derived FWHM
is close to the resolution limit of the spectrometer the real
FWHM could be even below this value. Obviously the high-
order laterally coupled gratings act as wavelength selective
elements.
The laser wavelength changes with temperature, as shown
in Fig. 4. Assuming a linear dependence in the temperature
range from 30 °C to 70 °C, the spectral shift of the RW-FP
and the LC-DFB lasers is 0.057 and 0.019 nm/K, respectively.
I.e. the temperature sensitivity of the LC-DFB laser is a
factor of three smaller than that of the RW-FP laser. The
fact that the emission wavelength of the LC-DFB laser is less
temperature sensitive than that of the RW-FP laser confirms the
coupling of the optical mode to the grating. For the LC-DFB
laser the shift of the emission wavelength with temperature
is mainly determined by the temperature dependence of the
effective refractive index of the optical mode rather than of the
modal gain spectrum as for the RW-FP laser operating around
the gain peak. Also the LC-DFB laser showed single peak
emission for the entire temperature range from 30°C to 70°C.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, we have demonstrated optically pumped
DFB lasers based on GaN with surface Bragg gratings of
10th -order laterally coupled to a RW using the greatly sim-
plified fabrication technology for DFB lasers. Single peak
emission with a resolution-limited FWHM of 0.06 nm was
achieved at a wavelength of 404.2 nm. The emission peak
wavelength of the LC-DFB laser was shown to be less sensitive
to the excitation power and temperature when compared to the
RW-FP laser. This clearly indicates the coupling of the optical
mode to the grating. Furthermore, it should be straight-forward
to extend the presented fabrication process of an optically
pumped LC-DFB laser to an electrically pumped LC-DFB
laser diode by (a) using n-type GaN substrates instead of
sapphire, (b) including p-type doping in the GaN and AlGaN
layers above the quantum wells, and (c) depositing p-contact
and n-contact metals on the wafers after the fabrication the
surface grating.
KANG et al.: OPTICALLY PUMPED DFB LASERS BASED ON GaN
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the department of process
technology of FBH in general for technological support.
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