Fabrication and surface-leakage suppression in (non-polar) m-Zn(Mg)O optoelectronic devices

Abstract

Zincoxide is a rather new material system and promising candidate for mid-infrared (mir) and THz optoelectronic devices like quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) and detectors (QCDs) due to its twice as high LO-phonon energy as GaAs. The non-polar m-plane orientation allows designing and realizing such complex devices without internal electrical fields. We present the full fabrication scheme of such QCL/QCD devices including novel optimized etching techniques, surface leakage current suppression by multiple orders of magnitude and low resistance Ohmic contacts (~10^(-5) Ohm x cm^2). Optimized fabrication schemes resulted in fabrication yielding up to more than 80% of operational devices.