Cubic zirconia as a high-quality facet coating for semiconductor lasers

Abstract

In this paper we describe the properties of high-quality, semiconductor laser facet coatings based on yttria-stabilizied cubic zirconia (90-m% ZrO2/10-m% Y2O3). We have found that cubic zirconia films can be reproducibly deposited by electron-beam evaporation with an index of refraction of 1.98 at 6328 Å, almost ideal for use as a single-layer antireflection coating for GaAs/GaAlAs-based lasers. ZrO2 has a monoclinic crystal structure at room temperature, but changes to tetragonal, hexagonal, and cubic phases upon heating to higher temperatures. However, the addition of the Y2O3 stabilizes ZrO2 in the cubic form, thus allowing electron-beam deposition of thin films of this material to be more controllable and reproducible without the usual addition of oxygen into the vacuum chamber during deposition. Preliminary aging tests of high-power GaAs/GaAlAs lasers show that cubic zirconia films suppress the photo-enhanced oxidation of laser facets that degrades device performance.