Effect of carrier confinement on the laser-induced etching of GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures

Abstract
Laser-induced photochemical etching was used to etch GaAs/AlGaAs multilayered material. In this carrier-driven process, the confinement of photogenerated holes to the alternating GaAs layers resulted in the controlled lateral etching of buried GaAs layers. An application of this etching technique to forming microcleaved laser facets is described.