Gain comparison in polar and nonpolar/semipolar gallium-nitride-based laser diodes

Experimental gain spectra at continuous-wave (CW) operation of laser diodes (LDs) fabricated from c-plane, nonpolar and semipolar GaN-based materials emitting in violet, blue and green spectral regions are presented. Gain spectra were obtained using the Hakki-Paoli method at high resolution. The ability of the setup to resolve the sharp Fabry-Perot longitudinal peaks of the lasers at all injection currents allowed us to accurately measure the current density to reach transparency on the devices characterized in this work, and determine both total losses and differential modal gain curves up to threshold. We present a comparison of transparency current density and modal gain for nonpolar and c-plane LDs in violet and blue regions. The main parameters for the analysis are the internal electric fields (for c-plane lasers), hole effective masses and valence band splittings. In a preliminary analysis, we investigated the gain spectrum of semipolar green LDs and observed a significantly lower total linewidth (homogeneous plus inhomogeneous) than reported elsewhere, which seems to indicate that inhomogeneous broadening is not the main issue governing the evolution toward high performance green LDs.