Semiconductor laser structure with an increased catastrophic optical damage level

This application claims the priority benefit of Taiwan application serial no. 88112205, filed Jul. 19, 1999, the full disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. A semiconductor laser structure is provided, which has an increased catastrophic optical damage (COD) level that allows the laser diode to have an increased life time of use. This semiconductor laser structure is characterized in the forming of a current-blocking structure proximate to the facets of the laser diode, which can help reduce the injected current into the facets, thereby increasing the COD level of the resulted laser diode. As a result, the resulted laser diode can operate at a high output power and nonetheless have an increased life time of use. Moreover, the forming of the current-blocking layers proximate to the facets can be performed simply by incorporating an additional photomask step in the fabrication without having equipment such as epitaxial equipment or vacuum equipment in the case of the prior art.