Role of substrate temperature in molecular-beam epitaxial growth of high-power GaAs/AlGaAs lasers

The growth of high-quality GaAs/AlGaAs graded-index separate-confinement heterostructure single-quantum-well diode lasers is shown to be critically dependent on growth temperature. The temperature-dependent nature of oxygen incorporation in the cladding and active regions and its effect on laser performance is investigated in detail. A model is presented that takes the incorporation, desorption, and accumulation of impurities in different regimes into account.