Ultra-precision Mechanical Cleavage Technology on Semiconductor Lasers with Broad Area Mirror Facets

As a novel technology for high-power semiconductor lasers with broad area mirror facets, mechanical cleavage technology has received extensive attention. The scribing step plays a critical role in the follow-up breaking step to create high-quality cavity mirror. However, there are still a lot of technical gaps to be filled at this stage. In this study, an edge-scribing method was proposed. The scribing energy of the edge-scribing and traditional scribing methods along the [0-1-1] directions were calculated and analyzed regarding energy consumption. The formation of cleaved mirror facets of GaAs-based laser bars was investigated using edge-scribing and traditional scribing methods. The results show that the edge-scribing method can significantly reduce energy consumption during the cleavage of GaAs, and the energy saving ratios exceed 70%. The surface roughness (Ra) of the obtained cleaving mirror facets by the edge-scribing method can achieve 0.43 nm.