Compound semiconductor materials and processing technologies for photonic devices and photonics integration

The advancement of semiconductor optoelectronics relies extensively on materials and processing technologies of ever-increasing sophistication, such as nanometer-range lithography, epitaxial growth methods with monatomic layer control, and anisotropic etching procedures that allows for the precise sculpturing of device features even in the limit of extreme aspect ratios. However, upcoming application needs puts requirements on optimized designs or device performances, e.g. in terms of integration density, power efficiency, modulation bandwidth or spectral response, which call for innovative and refined methodologies. In the present thesis, we investigate a few different device designs or processing schemes that aims for extended performances or manufacturability as compared to presently available technologies. In specific, we study the design and fabrication of transistor-vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (T-VCSELs), the regrowth of InP-based driver electronics in the trenches of arrayed spatial light modulators (SLMs), the epitaxial growth and analysis of quantum dot (QD)-based interband photodetectors, the realization of InGaAs/GaAs QD-based single-photon emitters for the 1.55-μm waveband, as well as the fabrication of discrete and silicon-integrated photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs).The transistor laser, invented at the University of Illinois around 2006, has received considerable interest due to potential major advantages in modulation bandwidth, noise properties and novel functionality as compared to conventional diode lasers. Here we study the design and fabrication of pnp-type 980-nm AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs T-VCSELs. Using an epitaxial regrowth process, an intracavity contacting scheme, and an optimized layer design, continuous-wave (CW) result in terms of threshold, output power and temperature performance comparable to conventional VCSELs could be demonstrated. In addition, the collector-current breakdown mechanism was shown to be due to a band-filling effect rather than an intracavity photon absorption process as previously suggested.A subsequent study regards the epitaxial regrowth for the integration of driver electronics with two-dimensional arrays of spatial light modulators (SLMs). The challenge here relies in controlling the regrowth morphology in the restricted areas that limit the SLM array fill factor. It is shown that the orientation of the SLM array with respect to the crystallographic directions is critical for contro