Fabrication of high-performance custom light sources and detectors at Tyndall under the National Access Programme
The III-V materials and device group at Tyndall has developed extensive technological expertise in light emitting and light detecting materials based on GaAs, InP and GaN covering wavelengths from 400 nm to 2000 nm. Example devices fabricated from these materials include edge emitting lasers with controlled spatial and spectral properties, high power edge emitting lasers, light emitting diodes, resonant cavity LEDs, superluminescent LEDs, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) to edge and surface normal photodetectors. These
devices can be used for communications at all length scales, in displays and in sensors. The devices can be customized for your desired applications in for example 1 and 2D arrays.
The device design, processing and packaging capabilities are now available to all researchers (including PhD students) in the Irish academic system through the National Access Program (NAP). The group offers services ranging from simple advice to complete design and fabrication of your devices. In addition to epitaxial growth of InP and GaAs based materials the group have extensive structuring processes on state-of-the-art equipment. A recent addition to our lithography pattering capabilities is a high resolution mask alignment system for realization of feature sizes < 0.5µm with alignment tolerances ~ 200 nm; The system includes near field holography for the generation of grating structures and backside alignment for double sided devices; a broad suite of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etch recipes suitable for controlled etching of multilayer structures; reflective and antireflection optical coatings for improved device performance; low capacitance/high speed contacts; quantum well intermixing for spatial post-growth control of bandgap; metal (Au, Pt, Ni, Pd, Ag, Al etc.) and dielectric (SiO2, SiNx, HfO etc) deposition via sputter, e-beam and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Also available are extensive diagnostic capabilities such as Focussed Ion Beam (FIB)
etching, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX) etc. Device characterisation such as power, current, spectral characterisation is available.
Example Devices
There is a large pool of expertise and experience to develop and deliver the devices or structures that you need. Examples of our current device research include single-frequency lasers, optical amplifiers, quantum dot based lasers and SLEDs, quantum well intermixed lasers, low divergence high power flared lasers, Mach Zehnder interferometers and arrayed waveguide gratings, surface emitting lasers, UV, visible and IR LEDs as well as plasmonic structures. These capabilities can be adapted for your application. Images of some of our recent work is shown below showing semiconductor shaping techniques, a FIB cross section of a VCSEL showing the oxidation aperture, telecom lasers with high speed contacts and whispering gallery mode structures.
