Self-pulsating 630-nm band strain-compensated MQW AlGaInP laser diodes

630-nm band AlGaInP laser diodes are very attractive light sources for high-density optical disk systems. These visible laser diodes are required for high performances such as self-pulsating operation, low threshold current, and so on. Recently, we developed self-pulsating 630-nm band AlGaInP laser diodes with a tensile strained multi-quantum well (S-MQW) active layer by optimizing structural parameters. However, the threshold current was not sufficiently low because of the thick active layer. On the other hand, we have investigated a strain-compensated multi-quantum well (SC-MQW) structure and achieved a single longitudinal mode visible laser diode with a low threshold current. In this study, we report the self-pulsating 630-nm band AlGaInP laser diodes with the lowest threshold current by introducing the SC-MQW structure into the active layer for the first time.