We fabricated high-power pure blue laser diodes (LDs) by using GaN-based material for full-color laser display. The operating output power, voltage and wall-plug efficiency of the LDs at forward current of 1.0 A were 1.17 W, 4.81 V and 24.3%, respectively. The estimated lifetime of the LDs was over 30,000 hours under continuous-wave operation.

We have fabricated AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with a thin InGaN cap layer to implement normally-off HEMTs with a small extrinsic source resistance. The key idea is to employ the polarization-induced field in the InGaN cap layer, by which the conduction band is raised leading to the normally-off operation. Fabricated HEMT with an In0.2Ga0.8N cap layer with a thickness of 5 nm showed normally-off operation with a threshold voltage of 0.4 V and a maximum transconductance of 85 mS/mm for the device with a 1.9-µm-long gate. By etching-off the In0.2Ga0.8N cap layer at the region except under the gate using gate and ohmic electrodes as etching masks, the sheet resistance has decreased from 2.7 to 0.75 kΩ/, and the maximum transconductance has increased from 85 to 130 mS/mm due to a reduction of the extrinsic source resistance. The transconductance was increased from 130 to 145 mS/mm by annealing the devices at 250 for 20 minutes in a N2 atmosphere.

Reduction of the intensity noise in semiconductor lasers is important subject to extend application range of the device. Blue-violet InGaN laser reveals high quantum noise when the laser is operated with low output power. The authors proposed a new scheme of noise reduction both for the optical feedback noise and the quantum noise by applying electric feedback which is positive type at a high frequency and negative type for lower frequency range. Noise reduction effect down to a level lower than the quantum noise was experimentally confirmed even under the optical feedback.

Properties of the quantum noise and the optical feedback noise in blue-violet InGaN semiconductor lasers were measured in detail. We confirmed that the quantum noise in the blue-violet laser becomes higher than that in the near-infrared laser. This property is an intrinsic property basing on principle of the quantum mechanics, and is severe subject to apply the laser for optical disk with the small consuming power. The feedback noise was classified into two types of "low frequency type" and "flat type" basing on frequency spectrum of the noise. This classification was the same as that in the near infra-red lasers.

In search of suitable white-LED for general illumination, we fabricated various types of white-LEDs using different methods. As the first method, we used the multichip method in which multiple emitters were mounted in one package. This type showed a good general color-rendering index (Ra) = 90 by the optimizing the emission wavelength of each LED chip. However, the electric driving circuitry was too complex for use in general illumination. Secondly, we used a monolithic white-LED by using the multicolor emitting multiple-quantum well (MQW) for the active layers, which consisted of quantum wells (QWs) with different In compositions. A high Ra = 80.1 was obtained in the three-color-emitting white-LED but the luminous efficacy (ηL) was only 8.11 lm/W. As the third method, we used the color conversion method using phosphors. We fabricated a white-LED which consisted of a near-UV-LED chip and blue/yellow phosphors in order to improve the luminous efficacy of the white-LED under high forward-bias current. At 100 mA, the luminous flux (IL) was estimated to be 7.6 lm. However, this white-LED degraded quickly, because the epoxy resin used for package was the general purpose one and deteriorated under the UV-light from the n-UV-LED. Next, we improved the Ra and ηL of a traditional white-LED which consisted of blue-LED chip and yellow phosphor. In order to improve the Ra, we added a newly developed red phosphor. We obtained a Ra = 87.7 at low-color-temperature. Then, in order to improve the efficiency of the white-LED, we improved the extraction efficiency (ηEX) of the blue-LED by using a patterned sapphire substrate and a high reflection Rh-mesh-patterned p-electrode. Then, we obtained a 62.0 lm/W at 20 mA. As a result, we concluded that the color conversion method of using a blue-LED for general illumination has advantages in efficiency, color-rendering, cost and lifetime. It also has simpler electric driving circuitry.

We introduce the characteristics for continuous wave operation at room temperature of InGaN laser diodes fabricated on SiC substrates. The threshold current was 60 mA, the threshold voltage was 8.3 V, and the oscillation wavelength was 404.4 nm. The lifetime of the laser diodes with a constant light output of 1 mW at 25 was 57 hours. The heat dissipation of the devices mounted p-side-up on a stem without using a heat sink was shown to be as good as that of devices mounted p-side-down with an external heat sink, owing to the high thermal conductivity of SiC substrates.

Our recent progress in GaN-based nanostructures for quantum dot (QD) lasers and vertical microcavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) is discussed. We have grown InGaN self-assembled QDs on a GaN epitaxial layer, using atmospheric-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The average diameter of the QDs was as small as 8.4 nm and strong photoluminescence emission from the QDs was observed at room temperature. Furthermore, we found that InGaN QDs could be formed even after 10 QD layers were stacked, thus increasing the total QD density. Using these growth results, we fabricated a laser structure with InGaN QDs embedded in the active layer. A clear threshold was observed in the dependence of the emission intensity on the excitation energy at room temperature under optical excitation. We succeeded in demonstrating in lasing action in vertical cavity surface emitting lasers at room temperature with a cavity finesse of over 200.

Laser diodes in the (Al, Ga, In) N system are attractive for many applications. Due to the wurtzite crystal structure, cleaved facets are not easily produced. We have investigated distributed feedback (DFB) laser diodes employing embedded dielectric gratings with the grating located above the active region. The dielectric gratings are incorporated via epitaxial lateral overgrowth. The DFB laser diodes had reduced threshold current densities over the etched cavity devices, with a minimum of 15 kA/cm2. The spectral emission width was considerably reduced for the DFB devices. Voltages for the DFB devices were high due to the presence of the Si3N4 grating within the p-type material.

Continuous-wave operation at room-tempera-ture has been demonstrated for InGaN multi-quantum-well (MQW) laser diodes (LDs) grown on FIELO GaN substrates with a backside n-contact. This was made possible by introducing important new concept of reducing threading dislocations that occur during the growth of the GaN substrates. We found that InGaN active layers grown on FIELO GaN are superior to those grown on conventional sapphire substrates in terms of their growth mode and the resultant In compositional fluctuation. The fabricated laser diode shows the threshold current, the threshold current density and the threshold voltage were 36 mA, 5.4 kA/cm2 and 7.5 V, respectively, with the lasing wavelength of 412 nm and internal quantum efficiency as high as 98%.

UV/blue/green InGaN and GaN single-quantum-well structure light-emitting diodes (LEDs) were grown on epitaxially laterally overgrown GaN (ELOG) and sapphire substrates. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) of the UV InGaN LED on ELOG was much higher than that on sapphire only at high-current operation. At low-current operation, both LEDs had the same EQE. When the active layer was GaN, EQE of the LED on sapphire was much lower than that on ELOG even at low- and high-current operations due to the lack of localized energy states formed by alloy composition fluctuations. In order to improve the lifetime of laser diode (LD), ELOG had to be used because the operating current density of the LD is much higher than that of LED. A violet InGaN multi-quantum-well/GaN/AlGaN separate-confinement-heterostructure LD was grown on ELOG on sapphire. The LDs with cleaved mirror facets showed an output power as high as 40 mW under room-temperature continuous-wave (CW) operation. The stable fundamental transverse mode was observed at an output power of up to 40 mW. The estimated lifetime of the LDs at a constant output power of 10 mW was more than 2,000 hours under CW operation at an ambient temperature of 60.