Room temperature cw GaAs and GaAIAs lasers

During the past 8 years, compounds of Ga1− x Al x As have been the subject of intensive study for the reproducible fabrication of reliable ir emitting lasers capable of sustained cw operation at and above room temperature. Numerous types of stripe-geometry double heterojunction lasers have been proposed and demonstrated including: (1) lasers with contact stripes isolated using an insulator such as silicon dioxide; (2) lasers with contact stripes isolated by bounding regions of high resistivity GaAs formed by proton bombardment; (3) lasers with contact stripes isolated by bounding p−n junction regions which are reversed biased during laser operation.