Light emission and detection characteristics of GaInAsP lateral current injection lasers for planar optoelectronic integrated circuits

The light emission and detection characteristics of a GaInAsP lateral current injection (LCI) laser were studied to examine feasibility for optoelectronic functional devices. LCI lasers which can be fabricated on semi-insulating substrates in quasi-planar structures are very appropriate for integration with electronic devices, and are promising light sources for optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs). For the light emission characteristics, the LCI laser has a modulation bandwidth above 2 GHz. Also, good eye openings at 1-Gb/s signals is confirmed for the laser in eye diagrams for pseudorandom bit stream input signals. For the light detection characteristics, the 3-dB detection bandwidth of more than 2 GHz, high responsivity of 0.54 A/W, and small polarization dependence of 0.17 dB are confirmed. These performances show that the LCI laser might be a good candidate for the light emission and detection diode in OEICs in future.