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.

II-VI laser diode was fabricated using a ZnCdSe/ZnS_0.06Se_0.94/ZnMgSSe SCH structure on GaAs, in which ZnMgSSe was originally proposed by our group. ZnMgSSe is lattice-matched to GaAs and the bandgap energy of ZnMgSSe is larger than that of ZnSe and ZnS_0.06Se_0.94 lattice-matched to GaAs. As for the crystal growth mechanism, the composition of ZnMgSSe is not changed and the RHEED pattern becomes spotty in group II-rich growth conditions and S incorporation is difficult in group VI-rich growth conditions. From these results, we consider that the optimized growth condition of ZnMgSSe is in the stoichiometric region (both (21) and c(22) were observed). As for the device quality, although the current density of this device is minimized to 500 A/cm², it was difficult to improve the reliability of the electrode and the active layer ZnCdSe. We found that the thin ZnTe and thick ZnSSe based electrode is necessary for reliability of the electrode, and that an optimized VI/II ratio is necessary for the reliability of the active region. To fabricate a relatively low-operating-voltage device, the stripe width is also an important parameter. In spite of relatively weak covalent bond of II-VI compounds, we can produce a device lifetime as long as 400 h.

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.

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%.

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.

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.

Optical transverse-mode properties of the GaN-based semiconductor laser-diode is characterized by effective refractive index method. In order to stabilize a transverse-mode in the conventional ridge-waveguide structure, very precise control of ridge-height is found to be necessary. On the contrary, a novel 2-step grown structure with 2-dimensional index guiding has wide feasibility for device parameter, excellent stability of large confinement factor in transverse-mode, and small aspect ratio of beam divergence, under the condition that AlN molar fraction of 0.08 in AlGaN current blocking layer and stripe width of 1.5 µm are used.

Pure green ZnTe light-emitting diodes (LEDs) were first realized reproducibly based on high quality ZnTe substrates and a simple thermal diffusion process. This success which overcomes the compensation effect in II-VI materials is due to the use of high quality p-type ZnTe single crystals with low dislocation densities of the level of 2000 cm^-2 grown by the vertical gradient freezing (VGF) method and the suppression of as compensating point defects by low temperature annealing with covering the surface of the substrates by the deposition of n-type dopant, Al. The thermal diffusion coefficient and the activation energy of Al were determined from the pn interface observed by scanning electron spectroscopy (SEM). The formation of the intrinsic pn junctions was confirmed from the electron-beam induced current (EBIC) observation and I-V measurement. The bright 550 nm electroluminescence (EL) from these pn-junctions was reproducibly observed under room light at room temperature, with the lifetime exceeding 1000 hrs.

We studied Si and Mg doping characteristics in cubic GaN and fabricated a light emitting diode of cubic GaN on a GaAs substrate by metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy. The diode structure consisted of undoped and Mg-doped GaN stacking layers deposited on Si-doped GaN and AlGaN layers. The electron-beam-induced-current signal and current injection characteristics of this diode structure were measured. There was a peak at the interface between the Mg-doped and undoped GaN in the electron-beam-induced-current signal. This shows successful growth of the p-n junction. Light emitting operation was achieved by currents injected through the conducting GaAs substrate of this diode at room temperature. We observed electroluminescence below the bandgap energy of cubic GaN with a peak at 2.6 eV.

Investigations were carried out on metalorganic-chemical-vapor-deposition (MOCVD)-grown strained AlGaN/ GaN/sapphire structures using X-ray diffratometry. While AlGaN with lower AlN molar fraction (< 0.1) is under the in-plane compressive stress, it is under the in-plane tensile stress with high AlN molar fraction (> 0.1). Though tensile stress caused the cracks in AlGaN layer with high AlN molar fraction, we found that the cracks dramatically reduced when the GaN layer quality was not good. Using this technique, we fabricated a GaInN multi-quantum-well (MQW) surface emitting diodes were fabricated on 15 pairs of AlGaN/GaN distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) structures. The reflectivity of 15 pairs of AlGaN/GaN DBR structure has been shown as 75% at 435 nm. Considerably higher output power (1.5 times) has been observed for DBR based GaInN MQW LED when compared with non-DBR based MQW structures.

Dislocation properties in InGaN/GaN Quantum Wells and GaN grown on bulk GaN and sapphire substrates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) were characterized using cathodoluminescnece (CL), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and photoluminescence (PL). It was clearly demonstrated that dislocations act as nonradiative recombination centers in both n-type (undoped and Si-doped) GaN and InGaN layers. Furthermore the very short-minority carrier diffusion length was a key parameter to explain the high light emission efficiency in GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) prepared on sapphire substrates. On the other side band-tail states were detected in the heteroepitaxial InGaN layers only by temperature dependence PL measurement. Additionally InGaN phase separation, which consists of few micron domains, has been produced under growth conditions which favors the spiral growth. These results indicate that the dislocations in the InGaN layers act as triggering centers for the InGaN phase separation which cause both a compositional fluctuation and the formation of few micron phase separated domains. The homoepitaxial InGaN layers showed however quite normal behaviors for all characterizations.

Excitonic optical properties of GaN homoepitaxial layers have been studied by means of magneto-luminescence and time-resolved luminescence spectroscopy. The luminescence lines due to the radiative recombination of excitons bound to neutral donors and acceptors have been measured under magnetic field up to 8 T, which was aligned perpendicular and parallel to the hexagonal c-axis. Under the magnetic field aligned perpendicular to the hexagonal c-axis, both the donor- and acceptor-bound-exciton lines clearly split into two components, which originated from the Zeeman splitting. The effective g-factors for both the donor- and acceptor-bound excitons were estimated to be 2.02 and 2.47, respectively. Under the magnetic field aligned parallel to the hexagonal c-axis, slight broadening of the bound-exciton lines was observed and the Zeeman splitting was too small to be detected. On the other hand, the diamagnetic shift for both the donor- and acceptor-bound-exciton luminescence lines was observed under the magnetic field aligned both perpendicular and parallel to the hexagonal c-axis. It was found that the diamagnetic shift of the donor-bound exciton was smaller than that of the acceptor-bound exciton. Furthermore, recombination dynamics of excitonic transitions was measured under high-density excitation. An excitation-density-dependent transition of the dominant radiative recombination process from donor-bound excitons to biexcitons was clearly observed in the temporal behavior. In addition, double-exponential decay of biexciton luminescence was observed, which is one of the characteristics of biexciton luminescence at high excitation densities.

In order to get a perspective to the future of GaN materials, theoretical and experimental knowledge of the optoelectronic activities of dislocations in hexagonal GaN have been reviewed. Although the dislocations in GaN have been thought to be not quite harmful, a growing number of evidences have been accumulated for the intrinsic noxiousness of the dislocations. There are some inconsistencies between experimental data reported by different groups or at different dates, which can be reconciled by a proposed simple model that takes into account the trapping of free excitons. A transmission electron microscopic study revealed that some type of dislocations exhibit the recombination enhanced dislocation glide effect, suggesting the non-radiative recombination activity of the fresh dislocations. Such intrinsic activities of dislocations in GaN, in both electronical and mechanical respects, will possibly cause great difficulties in optoelectronic devices based on this material when the crystal quality becomes improved.

The epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) of GaN with a stripe tungsten (W) mask pattern is performed by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) and the crystalline and optical properties are investigated compared with ELO GaN using SiO₂ mask by characterizations of X-ray rocking curve (XRC), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and low temperature cathodoluminescence (CL). A buried ELO structure of the W mask with a smooth surface is successfully obtained. The tilt of c-axis on the W mask in the ELO GaN is not observed, but in the case of the SiO₂ mask, c-axis tilts on the mask region at 1 to 10 together with small angle grain boundaries. Half the way from the ELO interface to the surface, the luminescence becomes excitonic over the whole lateral extension region, which indicates the optically high crystalline quality of the material. On the other hand, different kinds of luminescence are observed depending on the position. The difference of these luminescence is caused by the defects and/or impurity incorporation on the mask region due to the tilting of c-axis.

Electron-cyclotron-resonance plasma-excited molecular beam epitaxial (ECR-MBE) growth of GaN using hydrogen-nitrogen mixed gas plasma was investigated. The growth rate of GaN was drastically increased by addition of hydrogen to nitrogen plasma. The transition of reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) patterns, from streaked patterns created without the presence of hydrogen to spotted patterns in the presence of hydrogen, indicated that the effective V/III ratio was increased by the addition of hydrogen. NH_x radical families were detected in hydrogen-nitrogen mixed gas plasma by quadrupole mass spectroscopy and optical emission spectroscopy. These radicals were considered to be responsible for the observed increase in growth rate. Transmission electron microscope observation showed that the surface morphology of GaN without hydrogen was relatively flat and that with hydrogen was columnar with {1 0 ~1 1} facets. It seems likely that the columnar structure of the GaN layers grown with hydrogen were strongly related to initial island growth.

Halide vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) is the most promising method for obtaining bulk GaN, and a 2 inch free standing wafer has been already obtained by growing on a sapphire substrate and separating by laser irradiation. It is, however, neither very easy nor very productive. Here we propose another more productive way of growing on GaAs substrate, though a free standing GaN is not yet perfectly obtained. It was found that hexagonal GaN with a smooth surface can be grown on GaAs (111) substrates at as high as 1000 by introducing GaN layer grown at an intermediate temperature such as 850. Surface of the GaN layer grown at 850 was rough but it became smooth surface when GaN was grown on it at 1000, though sometimes there were several hexagonal pits on the surface. The θ-2θ and ω X ray diffraction (XRD) of the grown layer showed only hexagonal GaN(0002).

In this paper, the recent development of GaN bulk substrates is reviewed. Among various works on HVPE thick epitaxial growth, the largest free-standing GaN substrates upto 34 cm² has been first obtained by the HVPE method using NGO substrates, whose lattice constant has a good matching with that of GaN. For developing larger GaN substrates with lower production cost, the ultra-high pressure solution growth method is being developed not only in Poland but also in Japan under "The Light for the 21st Century" national project.

This paper describes a jitter suppression technique for a clock multiplier IC that uses a phase-locked loop (PLL). It is shown that the jitter cutoff frequency of the jitter transfer function can be greatly improved by adding a surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter whose center frequency equals the input frequency. The jitter transfer function is mainly determined by the characteristics of the SAW filter. Therefore, the clock multiplier IC can be set at a high loop gain to minimize the jitter generation without increasing the jitter cutoff frequency. The use of a clock multiplier IC that was fabricated with Si bipolar technology and a SAW filter with the center frequency of 155.52 MHz and a quality (Q) factor of 1500 results in a very low jitter generation of 3.5 mUI rms and an extremely low jitter cutoff frequency of about 50 kHz when the clock multiplier converts a clock frequency of 155.52 MHz into a 2.48832-GHz signal.

Bit error rates (BER) for playback of (1,7) code employed in optical disc recording were simulated using an ideal (Gaussian) playback waveform, with playback being performed by PRML (Partial Response Maximum-Likelihood) combining a partial response equalizer and a double clock weighted Viterbi decoder. It was found that best BER occurs for PR(2,3,3,2) +7/10 level Viterbi decoding at a weighted value of w = 0.5 for data consisting of 10⁷ symbols. For a minimum bit length of 0.28 µm, BER of 10^-4 and less than 10^-6 was obtained for SN ratios of 15.6 dB and 17.7 dB, respectively. And for a minimum bit length of 0.26 µm, BER of 10^-4 and less than 10^-6 was obtained for SN ratios of 16.7 dB and 18.8 dB, respectively. These results demonstrate the feasibility of a minimum bit length of 0.26 µm in current optical disc recorders.

Mathematical proof for the equivalent edge currents for physical optics (POEECs) is given for plane wave incidence and the observer in far zone; the perfect accuracy of POEECs for plane wave incidence as well as the degradation for the dipole source closer to the scatterer is clearly explained for the first time. POEECs for perfectly conducting plates are extended to those for impedance plates.

Biological object could be trapped by a single laser beam from an optical fiber end inserted at an angle to a sample chamber. Separation/coupling of an individual biological cell was easily achieved using plural optical fibers. From these experimental results, we verify that fiber optic trapping technology can provide new and novel tools for the manipulation of microorganisms and cells without physical contact.