Facet degradation of aged strained quantum-well lasers studied by high-voltage electron-beam-induced current

Abstract
High‐voltage electron‐beam‐induced‐current imaging is used to study the aging of two sets of commercial 0.98 μm lasers with identical strained quantum wells (In0.2Ga0.8As) but different cladding layers (Al0.55Ga0.45As versus In0.49Ga0.51P) on GaAs substrates. We observed the development of facet defects only in the InGaAs/AlGaAs lasers which also exhibited larger threshold‐current increases. It therefore suggests that this facet degradation mode is related to the cladding layer composition, not to the strains in the active layer.