Metallization to asymmetric cladding separate confinement heterostructure lasers

Annealed and nonannealed p-contact metallization for asymmetric cladding separate confinement heterostructure lasers with a thin p-cladding layer is reported. Ti–Au and annealed Ti–Pt–Au p-type contacts are demonstrated to improve the adhesion over a pure gold contact and allow annealing of the metallization to thin p-cladding laser structures at the expense of an increase in the optical loss. The increased optical loss is due to the decreased conductivity of titanium and platinum as compared to gold. As little as 10 Å of titanium is adequate for an adhesion layer and only increases the optical loss by 1.6 cm −1 over a pure gold metallization which has an optical loss of 10.0 cm−1. A metallization of 15 Å Ti−15 Å Pt−1500 Å Au is adequate for an anneal at 410 °C for 10 s and increases the optical loss by 7.0 cm −1.