Progress of Aluminum Gallium Indium Phosphide Red Laser Diodes and Beyond

High-quality aluminum gallium indium phosphide epitaxial layers for red laser diodes have been grown by the metal organic chemical vapor deposition method. The layers have some issues, such as narrowing of the band gap, low p-carrier concentration, difficulty in epitaxial growth for quantum well structures, and generating of high-density hillocks. The issues have been successfully solved by introducing (100) substrates with misorientaion toward the [011] direction. High performance transverse-mode stabilized lasers are achieved by introducing the substrates, novel strain-compensated multiple-quantum well structures, which can add large strain to the wells, and low-loss optical cavity. This article also describes their applications.