Monolithic integration of gallium arsenide optoelectronic devices

Citation

Ury, Israel (1980) Monolithic integration of gallium arsenide optoelectronic devices. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/s4x6-kk53. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-09282006-090324

Abstract

The optical properties of GaAs make it a very useful material for the fabrication of optical emitters and detectors. GaAs also possesses electronic properties which permit the fabrication of high speed electronic devices which are superior to conventional silicon devices. This thesis describes three examples of the monolithic integration of optical and electronic devices on semi-insulating GaAs substrates.

In the first example, an injection laser was integrated with a Gunn oscillator to yield a high frequency modulated optical source. In the second example, an injection laser was integrated with a metal semiconductor field effect transistor (MESFET). The transistor was used to modulate the current through the laser. In the third example, an integrated optical repeater was demonstrated which consisted of a MESFET optical detector, a current source, a transistor driver, and an injection laser all fabricated on a single chip. The repeater displayed an optical gain of 10 dB.

In order to facilitate the fabrication of more complex integrated optoelectronic circuits, a method was sought to form a laser cavity which did not occupy the entire width of a chip. The result was the demonstration of whispering gallery lasers which take the shape of quarter and half rings. The performance of the curved lasers was reduced from that of the straight lasers due to optical scattering at imperfections along the curve. A general theory is developed which describes mode conversion in perturbed dielectric resonators. This theory is applied to the case of the whispering gallery laser and its predictions are compared with experiment.

Thesis Files