Blue and UV semiconductor lasers

Despite many technological difficulties the group III nitrides: GaN, AlN and InN and their alloys are primary candidates for electro-optical coherent light sources. In the recent years the research and technology of the nitride based continuous wave (CW) laser diodes (LDs) led to creation of blue-violet coherent light sources of power up to 200 mW. The progress has been attained by using various ways to attack the main obstacles in the technology of these devices such as insufficient size of high quality lattice matched substrates, low p-doping efficiency of Mg acceptor, poor contact to p-type semiconductor and low efficiency of radiative recombination. The two different approaches were used to overcome the substrate problem: hetero-epitaxy and homoepitaxy. Homoepitaxy used high pressure GaN high quality crystals. Heteroepitaxy used sapphire, SiC or GaAs substrates and very sophisticated techniques of reduction of the dislocation density. The low p-doping efficiency by using Mg acceptor is related to creation of Mg-H complexes due to hydrogen presence during the growth of laser diode quantum structures. In addition, Mg acceptor has low efficiency due to its high energy. High Mg concentrations can be obtained by using either MOCVD or ammonia source MBE growth. An alternative route is to use hydrogen-free plasma activated MBE (PA-MBE) method. The recent advances and the prospects of both approaches will be discussed. Solid AlGaInN solution offers a possibility to cover wide spectral range, starting from near UV to blue, green and red. Arsenide based laser diodes (LDs) are efficient coherent red light sources. Therefore, nitride based LDs are considered to be devices of choice for green, blue and UV spectral range. So far only blue and violet laser has been realized. The progress toward green and UV lasers is far less spectacular. The results in all these areas and future prospects will be discussed.