Facet-passivation processes for the improvement of Al-containing semiconductor laser diodes

The passivation requirements for high-power 980-nm and mid-power 780-nm quantum-well (QW) ridge-waveguide (RWG) Al-containing laser diodes cleaved in air were investigated. In a direct comparison with argon ablation, sulphation, and silicon-barrier-passivation techniques, nitrided facets with a silicon nitride barrier layer exhibited up to an order of magnitude improvement in device lifetime over the next-best method during highly accelerated testing while also maintaining high catastrophic optical damage (COD) or catastrophic optical mirror damage (COMD) thresholds. Well-oxidized facets of 980-nm devices exposed to air for six months were recovered with this process to give reasonable lifetimes (5.66/spl times/10/sup -5/ h/sup -1/ power degradation) during highly accelerated testing.