Design and Characterization of Integrated Photonic Devices Fabricated Using Selective-Area Epitaxy and Distributed Bragg Reflector Surface Gratings

105 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997.The second challenge involved with the fabricating of integrated photonic devices is the formation of integrable high-Q cavities. The optical feedback in most laser diodes is provided by cleaved facets. Unfortunately, cleaved facets are not an option when designing integrated photonic devices. However, optical feedback can be provided in integrated photonic devices using distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). In this dissertation, ridge-waveguide DBR lasers with first-order surface gratings are investigated. These lasers exhibit low thresholds (6 mA), high slope efficiencies (0.46 W/A), and single-frequency operation with narrow linewidths ($<$25 kHz). By varying the period of the first-order DBR grating, a wide wavelength range of 540 A (15.2 THz) is obtained with threshold currents and slope efficiencies remaining below 10 mA and above 0.40 W/A, respectively, over the entire wavelength range. These gratings are also used to fabricate DBR lasers with monolithically integrated external cavity electroabsorption (EA) modulators without modification of the active region.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD