A forbidden temperature region for the growth of planar strained InAlGaAs MQW structures for 1.3*um lasers

摘要

Compressively strained MQW InAlGaAs laser structures have been grown on [100] sulfur-doped InP substrates using digital alloy molecular beam epitaxy at temperatures in the range 480-585℃. In the limited temperature interval ～520-555℃ quantum wells with ～1.4% compressive strain become non-planar, and their photoluminescence emission spectra broaden significantly. AFM measurements show that this is due to the formation of quantum dashes. Their effect upon the material characteristics and subsequent device performance is presented and discussed.