Optimizing the Substrate Removal Technique for thermal management of 2µm VECSEL grown on GaAs.

REU Student: Gregory BallouGraduate Mentor: Emma RenteriaFaculty Mentor: Dr. Ganesh Balakrishnan

1.A. Introduction:

Since 1960, the LASER which is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated

Emissions of Radiation has been used for several applications. It has been used in military

applications as a rangefinder and for painting targets for smart bombs. Civilian uses include

anything from laser pointers to leveling devices to alignment of optical systems. These

applications are possible because of a laser’s properties of having highly monochromatic light

that is light of one wavelength and having light that is highly collimated meaning that the

photons are very close together while they propagate through the air or the medium they happen

to be in. It was Albert Einsteinin 1917 who first theorized about the process that makes lasers

possible called “Stimulated Emission”[1,2]. Before the laser was the maser which is acronym

for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. This works on the same

principles as the laser but emits no light photons; it was mainly used to amplify radio signals.

The men who invented the maser, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow, were at Columbia

University [1,2]. In 1960, Theodore Maiman invented the first optical laser. It was called the

ruby laser because it used a ruby rod doped with chromium to emit light in a beam. However it

was pulsed and had few applications[1,2]. Ali Javan, in 1960, invented the first gas laser which

was the Helium-Neon which outputs visible light at 632.8 nm wavelength (red). These Helium-

Neon lasers are widely used today. There are even Helium-Neon lasers that emit a green light at

around 532 nm wavelength. In 1962, a new kind of laser was invented by Robert Hall. This new

laser was a Semiconductor laser made of Gallium-Arsenide at General Electric Labs [1,2]. This

was followed closely by the first continuous wave solid state laser.

There are basically three types of lasers: gas lasers, solid state lasers, and semiconductor

lasers. Gas lasers have different uses that are determined by wavelength and power out. For

example, Helium-Neon lasers are usually low power but operate in the visible spectrum and

make good alignment lasers, CO2 lasers are higher power and operate at a wavelength of 10.6µ

in the IR range and they are good for cutting and welding metals, Argon lasers are good for

pumping other lasers dye and chemical lasers it can be used to optically excite other lasers; it

also makes good hologram slides. Solid –state lasers, such as ruby rod, and Nd: Yag operate in

the near IR wavelength. These lasers use a crystal doped with an ion which provides the

wavelength of the light that the laser operates at. The military has used ruby rod lasers in

rangefinder applications, they have also used Nd:Yag lasers as rangefinders, but they are most

commonly used in the medical field in surgery.The next types of lasers are the Semiconductor

lasers. There are several kinds of semiconductor lasers and they operate differently than solid

state lasers and gas lasers. Semiconductor lasers have an engineered band gap instead of

atraditional active medium.The photons that are released are spontaneous and most will combine

to be in phase, highly coherent, monochromatic light. Those photons that are not emitted are

absorbed by the diode as heat energy making the diode very hot which can lead to a breakdown

in the diodes structure. The internal heating can also interfere with the diodes ability to lase and

maintain a population inversion. Edge emitting diode lasers which are the first semiconductor

lasers that were used in mass quantities, also the first semiconductor lasers invented,are pumped

by electrical current which itself is a source of heat. Another type of semiconductor laser is the

Vertical External Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VECSEL).

The lasers mentioned here all have one thing in common, that is that they are all very

inefficient when it comes to power use (which is power out over power in). The best that most

lasers can hope for is about10% - 30% especially in gas and solid state lasers. Semiconductor

lasers are about 50% efficient with some high power semiconductor lasers having 60% - 70%

efficiency. The reason that lasers are so inefficient is that the energy that is not emitted as light is

converted into heat. Therefore, elimination of this heat is crucial to improve laser efficiency. It

is especially true for semiconductor lasers where excessive heat can lead to structural break

down. For most lasers (gas and solid state) the problem of heat is solved by simply designing a

heat exchange system around the active medium using circulating water from the city or from

water cooling tower; some lasers come with or one can have ordered for it a system that has a

refrigerated water cooling system. The cooling system usually includes cooling the power

supply also since so much power is required to excite the lasers; this is normal practice because

most power supplies are made with semi-conductors and they create large amounts of heat while

in operation. The cost of, all of these solutions is very expensive and are all external solutions to

the problem of controlling heat in lasers. So it makes sense to engineer the laser so that the

creation of heat is at a minimum. The applications for VECSELs are many because of their

versatility in wavelength and power; plus they are compact in size and that makes them perfect

for science and commercial applications. Their photonic applications range from research to

military the following are just a few. VECSELs can be used in the fields RGB laser illuminators

for next generation TV’s, high accuracy gyroscopes for satellite navigation, radar, lidar, free

space communications, medical diagnostic and surgery, sensing and security, fiber optics

communications.

2.B Background:

1. Definition of a VECSEL.

A VECSEL is a type of semiconductor laser. Its name is an acronym for Vertical External

Cavity Surface Emitting Laser. Figure 1[3] shows its major components . The bottom mirror is a

highly reflective mirror usually a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). A DBR is composed of

multiple layers of materials with different refractive index which allows up to 99.9% reflectivity.

The active region that can be composed of quantum well, quantum dashes, or quantum dots is

band gap engineered to absorb the pumped photons and emit photons at a desired wavelength

[4]. The external cavity is formed between the active region and the external mirror. The

external mirror, also call an output coupler, is partially reflective spherical mirror that defines the

laser transverse mode [4] and allows the extraction of a portion of the laser beam from the cavity.

Figure 1. Configuration of an optically pumped VECSEL.

Figure 2 shows the basic functions of the VECSEL components. High energy incident

pump photons are absorbed into pump absorbing region [4]. Carriers diffuse to the quantum

wells where electrons are excited and relaxed emitting photons with energy equal to the quantum

well band-gap energy [4]. The generated photons travel back and forth in the cavity. These

photons stimulate more electrons in high energy levels to drop to lower energy levels and

generate more photons with same wavelength and phase emitting coherent light as shown in

Figure 3 [5]. As it can be seen in Figure 3 in order to produce a considerable amount of photons

by stimulated emission, population inversion must be maintained hence the use of an external

pump laser [4-6]. Eventually, enough photons will be generated and they will escape the cavity

through the output coupler.

Figure 2. Operating principles of optically pumped VECSELs [4].

Figure 3. Stimulated emission processes [5].

2. Thermal Management

In a VECSELs, it seems that most of the heat comes from the pumping mechanism which is

the external laser that is exciting the active medium. Less than 100% of the energy pump into

the laser is converted to effective radiative power and hence the rest is converted to heat. This is

due to the difference in energy between the incident pump photons and emitter laser photons.

The pump photons have higher energy than the emitted photons and thus the energy difference is

dissipated as heat in the active medium. As the temperature increases in the active medium the

excited carriers star escaping the quantum wells until the laser gain is depleted and the power

output decreases. This effect is called thermal rollover and can be observed in Figure 4 [6].

Hence, thermal management is crucial for VECSEL power performance and it is usually

addressed by using heat spreader plates and heat sinks as will be explained next.

Figure 6. Output power from a 1 µm VECSEL with an unprocessed InGaAs/GaAs gain as

a function of incident pump power at two different temperature settings [6].

Several VECSELs designs had been developed to remove the undesired heat from the active

region. The ones most mention in literature [4, 6-8] are shown in Figure 7. The first one, Figure

7a, is the most simple design. The VECSEL is directly bonded to a heat sink exactly as it is

grown. This design is not too efficient due to the substrate thermal impedance. In addition to the

poor thermal conductivity of the substrates, (33 W m-1 K-1 for GaSb [7] and 45 W m-1 K-1 for

GaAs [8]), they are too thick, up to 500µm. The second design, Figure 7b, the substrate is

removed hence improving heat removal. However, this design can only be used when etch

chemistry permits a good selectivity between the substrate and an etch stop layer as it will be

described in the subsequent sections. For this design, The VECSEL structure is grown in

reverse order. The active medium is grown close to the substrate and the DBR is grown last. In

this way the heat is extracted through the DBR and even though DBR's thermal conductivity

could still be low, ( 11 W m-1 K-1 for Al0.5Ga0.5As DBR [6]), thermal diffusion length is much less

than with the presence of the substrate. In the third design, Figure 7c, heat is extracted directly

from the active region. The active region is bonded to heat spreader plate. Thus, the substrate

can be either removed or kept depending of its etch chemistry. However, the heat spreader must

be transparent such as transparent diamond, sapphire or silicon carbide.

Figure 7. VECSEL structure designs for thermal management.

3. Substrate Removal techniques

There exist two types of etching mechanisms: physical etching which relies on physical

interaction of particles that erode the surface and wet/dry etching that relies on chemical

reactions to erode the surface [9]. Typically a combination of both methods is used to remove

Active-regionDBR

substrates with thickness between 300µm and 500µm. First, the substrate is mechanically thin

down to about 100µmand then wet etching or dry etching is applied [7-8, 10-11]. However, dry

etching is highly associated with surface damaging since it uses bombardment of ions from

reactive gases to disassociate the substrate [9]. In view of the fact that a VECSEL surface must

be smooth, dry etching is undesirable leaving us with wet etching as the reminding option.

Wet etching is the process by which layers of material are removed by using liquid chemical

solutions. A wet etching process usually involves a three step reaction mechanism as shown on

Figure 8 [12]. First step, the reactants diffuse to the semiconductor surface. Second step, the

chemical reaction occurs at the surface by oxidation reduction. Third step, reaction products

diffuse from surface to dissolve into the solution. Therefore, the reaction chemistry between the

semiconductor material and the etchant solution must be compatible.

Figure 8. Reaction mechanism for a wet etching process.

Wet etching systems for GaAs had been studied extensively [11, 13-15]. A typically GaAs

system is shown in Figure 9. Usually, the etchant solution is composed of an oxidizing agent

such as hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, and a solvent agent such as ammonium hydroxide, NH4OH, or

citric acid, C6H8O7 [13]. These etchant solutions have a higher selectivity for GaAs material than

for AlGaAs which means GaAs is etched at a much faster rate than AlGaAs [13-15]. Therefore,

AlGaAs acts as an etch stop layer. Once, the etchant solution reaches AlGaAs the etch rate

becomes so slow that the layer is conserved and it is an indication that the substrate has been

removed. In addition, AlGaAs layer can be etched in seconds with Hydrofluoric acid which has

aextreme selectivity for AlGaAs over GaAs [14]. Nonetheless, in this experiment the system is

GaSb/GaAs as shown is Figure 9b and the selectivity of etchant solutions for GaAs over GaSb

must be determined.

Figure 9. Structure of etching systems for a) GaAs and b) GaSb/GaAs.

3.C. Experimental Procedure:

Previous experiments have shown that an etch stop layer is unnecessary for the substrate

removal of GaAs in GaSb/GaAs systems. Now, the goal of this study is to optimize a substrate

removal technique to obtain the smoothest surface possible. The GaSb layers used in this

experiment were grown by means of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). A3μm thin GaSb film was

grown at a rate of 0.50μm/hr at a temperature of 510°C with a V to III ratio of Sb to Ga of 6.6

onGaAs substrate.

1. Preparing the sample

The sample were cleaved in squares of 1cm x 1cm for easy handling. Cleaving is performed

using a diamond scriber. The wafer is placed epitaxial side up on a clean room wipe sheet. With

a ruler on the straight side of the sample 1cm is measured and marked by scribing a small line.

Then the wafer is placed over a straighten out paper clip so that the scribe line aligns with the

paper clip and by applying equal pressure to both sides of the wafer with the ends of two

tweezers the sample fractures in a straight line. The same procedure is repeated until the

maximum possible 1cm2 chips are obtain from one wafer.

bGaSb (3 μm)

GaAs Substrate

GaAs Al0.95Ga0.05As

GaAs Substrate

a

The next step is to chemically clean the sample to remove any impurities that may reside on

the wafer surface. Each sample was soaked in acetone, isopropanol, and methanol for 2 minutes

in each solution. Then the sample was rinsed with deionized (DI) water and dried with a

Nitrogen gun. Nomarski images of the clean surface were taken before the bonding procedure.

Microscope glass slides were cut into three pieces. A pinch of ApiezonW ® wax was placed

on top of the glass slide and then the slide was placed on a hot plate at a temperature of 150°C.

Once the wax was melted, the sample was placed on the wax with the GaSb layer facing down.

Slight pressure was applied on the sample to assure even contact, free of air bubbles, with the

wax. Then the sample was removed and allowed to cool.

2. Measuring etch rate and selectivity

Since there is no etch stop layer, it is essential to know with precision the rate at which the

etchant solution will etch GaAs as well as GaSb. To measure the etch rate on GaAs, the sample

bonded to glass was measured with a micrometer before and after etch at five spots as shown in

the diagram in Figure 10. Etch rate is equal to the thickness removed per unit time. The etch

time was set for forty minutes. The etch rate for each of the five spot in the sample was

calculated and averaged with the other to have a better estimate of the whole 1cm2 surface. To

measure the etch rate on GaSb, the sample bonded to glass with the GaSb layer facing up was

etched monitoring the time it took to etch the 3µm GaSb layer. The sample was measured and

you can see the measurements in microns. The top number is the before measurement the bottom

number is the after measurement. The bottom number is subtracted from the top number which

tells us how many microns were etched in that spot. After determine how many microns were

etched we take that number and calculate the etch rate; which is thickness / time. We do this for

each spot measured, add the results and divide by five, which gives us and overall average of

how much substrate was removed.

Figure 10. Diagram of measuring positions.

3. Removing the substrate.

The etchant solution of NH4OH: H2O2 at a volume ratio of 1: 33 was used. It was prepared

by mixing 500ml of H2O2 and 15ml of NH4OH. The sample was placed and secured on the jet

etcher sample holder as shown in Figure 11. The jet etcher is a homemade etcher that uses a

pump to circulate the etchant solution and to keep a constant flow falling on the sample. Once

the sample and the solution were ready, the pump was turned on and the valve open. The etch

process was monitored through all the etch time to assure a steady stream and therefore an even

etch. When the etch time was expired, the etch was stop by quenching the sample in DI water.

The surface was dried with nitrogen gun and its surface was analyzed under Nomarski

microscope.

Figure 11. Jet etcher setting.

4. C Results:

The substrate removal of GaAs was successfully achieved as it can be verified in the

XRD Etch analysis. Figure 12 shows the results from omega-two theta X-Ray diffraction study

of the sample before (red curve) and after (black curve) the etch process. It can be clraerly notice

that the substrate peak in the black curve, post etch, is completely gone leaving behind only the

GaSb layer peak. This is an indication that the NH4OH: H2O2 1:33 ratio has a higher selectivity

for GaAs than for GaSb.

Figure 12. Omega-two theta X-Ray diffraction study of the sample before (red curve) and

after (black curve) the etch process.

Nomarski microscope was used to analyze the surfaces of GaSb epi-layer before and after

the etch. Figure 13 shows the Nomarski images results which shows almost no difference in

surface quality. Therefore, further analysis need to be done to determine the roughness of the

surface.

Figure 13. Nomarski images of GaSb surfaces a) before etch, b) after etch.

References

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