News: Suppliers
27 January 2025
III–V Epi advocates GaAs epi regrowth for emerging semiconductor laser applications
Professor Richard Hogg, chief technical officer at III–V Epi Ltd of Glasgow, Scotland, UK — which provides a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) service for custom compound semiconductor wafer design, manufacturing, test and characterization —advocates using gallium arsenide (GaAs) epitaxial regrowth for many emerging semiconductor laser applications. Gallium arsenide is a less proven material system than indium phosphide (InP), which is commonly used in high-volume 5G, datacom, telecom and co-packaged optics applications. Gallium arsenide’s wavelength range from red 650nm quantum wells to near-infrared 1300nm quantum dots has many benefits over InP, which operates at 1200–1700nm. All epitaxial regrowth brings improved heat dissipation; reduced optical loss; and extensive photonics integration opportunities. However, gallium arsenide’s manufacturing flexibility and wavelength range make it ideal for many new industrial, biomedical, datacoms, sensing, silicon photonics, and data storage applications, notes Hogg.
“III–V Epi, as a specialist in fast-turnaround manufacture of MBE and MOCVD III–V epitaxial structures, has extensive gallium arsenide capability and experience,” says Hogg. “Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) machines are usually used for gallium arsenide epitaxial regrowth, depositing semiconductor layers onto a wafer’s substrate surface and DFB laser grating. A cladding and cap layer sandwich the active region to provide optical confinement, ensuring light emission is from the laser’s facet,” he adds.
“III–V Epi has developed epitaxial regrowth processes to achieve these steps using gallium arsenide, with expert control of temperature, reagents and pressure parameters to ensure optimal crystalline quality and uniformity,” Hogg continues. “III–V Epi has also developed ‘marker’ layers to track the re-growth of novel PIC [photonic integrated circuit] devices, wafer etching and doping, used to increase conductivity, heat extraction and current blocking. Further epitaxial regrowth steps can produce buried heterostructures for greater output power, or symmetrical output beams for reduced optical loss, which suits a broad range of emerging, industrial applications.”
III–V Epi’s CTO Richard Hogg chairing International Workshop on PCSELs
III-V Epi’s CTO Richard Hogg being made Professor of Photonics at Aston University
