The effect of rapid thermal annealing upon quantum-well lasers which had been grown by means of solid-source molecular beam epitaxy was studied. It was found that, when the structures were annealed, the threshold current densities of the lasers decreased significantly. This improvement was attributed to the possibility that annealing removed non-radiative recombination centers from the quantum wells. The emission wavelength, differential quantum efficiency, and characteristic temperature were not greatly affected; thus indicating that the interdiffusion of group-III elements did not damage the structures.

M.Jalonen, M.Toivonen, P.Savolainen, J.Köngäs, M.Pessa: Applied Physics Letters, 1997, 71[4], 479-81