Second-harmonic generation in periodically poled GaN

Aref Chowdhury, Hock M. Ng, Manish Bhardwaj, and Nils G. Weimann

Citation: Applied Physics Letters 83, 1077 (2003); doi: 10.1063/1.1599044

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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS VOLUME 83, NUMBER 6 11 AUGUST 2003

Second-harmonic generation in periodically poled GaN

Aref Chowdhury,a) Hock M. Ng, Manish Bhardwaj, and Nils G. Weimann
Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974
共Received 12 May 2003; accepted 16 June 2003兲
We report the experimental demonstration of second-harmonic generation in periodically poled GaN
by first-order quasiphase matching. The periodically poled structure was grown by plasma-assisted
molecular-beam epitaxy. We observed about 9 ␮W of second-harmonic power from a fundamental
input laser wavelength of 1658.6 nm with a normalized conversion efficiency of 12.76%
W⫺1 cm⫺2 . The ability to perform nonlinear wavelength conversion by periodic poling and the fact
that GaN has a very wide window of transparency, pave the way for GaN to be used for nonlinear
optical devices in telecommunications as well as a nonlinear light source for biochemical detection
in the far infrared and deep ultraviolet. © 2003 American Institute of Physics.
关DOI: 10.1063/1.1599044兴

Performing quasiphase matching 共QPM兲1 with periodi-
cally poled structures has proven to be a very useful tech-
nique for efficient nonlinear frequency conversion especially
in materials such as LiNbO3 2,3 and GaAs.4 – 6 Efficient fre-
quency conversion requires that a constant phase relationship
be maintained among the interacting optical waves over the
length of the nonlinearity. In general, the phase matching
condition is not naturally satisfied because of material and
waveguide dispersion. QPM periodically reverses the nonlin-
earity, thus returning the optical fields to their initial phase
relationship. Though there have been prior demonstrations of
frequency conversion in GaN by, for example, waveguide
modal dispersion phase matching,7 the success of GaN as an
efficient frequency converter will require the ability to fabri-
cate periodically poled GaN or what we refer to from now on
as PPGaN.
Although the second-order nonlinear susceptibility of
GaN is only ␹ 333(2)
⫽33 pm/V, 8 which is about half that of
LiNbO3 , GaN possesses distinct advantages over both
LiNbO3 and GaAs. The transparency window of LiNbO3 is
⬃350 nm– 5 ␮ m, GaAs is ⬃873 nm– 13 ␮ m, and GaN is
⬃365 nm– 13.6 ␮ m. We can clearly see from the transpar-
ency ranges that GaN has a window equivalent to that of
LiNbO3 and GaAs combined; consequently, GaN has the po-
tential of generating wavelengths in either the far infrared or
near UV by sum- or difference-frequency generation. The
transparency window can also be extended deeper into the
UV (⬃ 200 nm) by replacing GaN with AlN. In addition,
PPGaN does not require heating during operation because it
does not exhibit the photorefractive effect unlike LiNbO3 .
For second-harmonic generation 共SHG兲 by first-order
QPM, the required grating periodicity ⌳ is given by
␭␻
⌳⫽ , 共1兲
2 共 n 2 ␻ ⫺n ␻ 兲
where ␭ ␻ is the fundamental wavelength at ␻, and n ␻ and
n 2 ␻ are the refractive indices at the fundamental and second-
harmonic wavelengths, respectively.
a兲
Electronic mail: arefc@bell-labs.com
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In contrast to electric field poling in LiNbO3 , the
PPGaN is fabricated using growth by plasma-assisted mo-
lecular beam epitaxy 共MBE兲 where the growth polarity can
be controlled to be either Ga- 共0001兲 or N-polar (000 1̄). 9,10
The preparation of the sample involved two growth steps.
The first growth was initiated on 共0001兲 sapphire with an
AlN buffer layer 共20–30 nm兲 grown at a substrate tempera-
ture of about 720 °C. The substrate temperature measure-
ment was made using a thermocouple that was located be-
hind the substrate. In addition, the back of the sapphire
substrate was coated with 300 nm of Ti to improve the heat-
ing uniformity. After growth of the AlN buffer, a thin layer of
GaN (⬃100 nm) was grown to prevent any oxidation of the
AlN layer upon removal from the growth chamber. The
sample was then lithographically patterned with photoresist
to form a stripe pattern. After that, the sample was etched
using reactive-ion/inductively coupled plasma with a Cl2 /Ar
mixture until the sapphire substrate was exposed. This re-
sulted in a sample with periodic GaN/AlN and sapphire
stripes. The sample was cleaned in an aqueous HCl solution
followed by a de-ionized water rinse and blown dry with
nitrogen before reintroduction into the MBE chamber. The
second growth of GaN was then initiated at a growth tem-
perature of 720 °C resulting in regions of Ga- and N-polar
GaN on the GaN/AlN and directly on sapphire, respectively.
The resulting PPGaN is shown in Fig. 1. The alternating
polarity of the GaN layers was confirmed by observing dif-
ferent reconstruction patterns in reflection high-energy elec-
tron diffraction on control samples. The thickness of the PP-
GaN was 4 ␮m and the length of the final polished sample
was L⫽1.2 cm after mechanically polishing the end facets.
We can see from the inset in Fig. 1 that the Ga-polar regions
are much smoother than those of the N- polar; the difference
in surface morphology is due to the fact that the Ga-polar
material grows on top of an AlN buffer layer 共lattice mis-
match ⬃2.5%) whereas the N-polar material is nucleated at
the high growth temperature directly onto sapphire 共lattice
mismatch ⬃14%).
Based on previously reported GaN refractive indices,11
we designed and fabricated PPGaN with ⌳⫽17.2 ␮ m 共with
a 50% duty cycle兲 so that the PPGaN would produce SHG
1077 © 2003 American Institute of Physics
 1078 Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 83, No. 6, 11 August 2003 Chowdhury et al.

FIG. 3. Schematic of the experimental setup used for performing second-

harmonic generation in PPGaN.

The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 3. The input

FIG. 1. Scanning electron microscopy image of the PPGaN sample with a
periodicity of 17.2 ␮m. A higher magnification image is shown in the inset.
for an input wavelength of around 1550 nm. However, no
SHG was observed in the input wavelength range of 1500–
1600 nm. Subsequently, spectroscopic ellipsometry was per-
formed by J. A. Woollam Co., Inc. 共Lincoln, Nebraska兲 on
our GaN samples to see if the samples had different indices
than that of Ref. 11. The results of the refractive index mea-
surements are shown in Fig. 2 for both the ordinary and
extraordinary axes, and the indices were found to be different
from that of Ref. 11. The indices from 500 nm to 5 ␮m can
be modeled by using a linear sum of Sellmeier relationships
along with an offset and are given by
laser beam was a pulsed femtosecond tunable source. The
pulse duration was about 130 fs with a repetition rate of 80
MHz and pulse energy of 1.25 nJ. This translates to 100 mW
of average power at the fundamental. The input beam under-
went polarization adjustment, collimation, and then focusing
onto the sample. The beam was focused in such a way that
its minimum waist (⬃100 ␮ m) was located about half way
into the sample along the direction of propagation. Owing to
diffraction in the transverse direction and the fact that there
was no lateral confinement 共a planar waveguide兲, a lens was
used to collect the output light and focus it to the silicon
detector with an intermediate infrared filter to remove the
light at the fundamental.
The second-harmonic power produced as a function of
input wavelength is shown in Fig. 4. For this graph, the peak
occurs at ␭⫽1658.6 nm which is close to our calculated
wavelength of 1633 nm; as a point to note, an error in esti-
mating (n 2 ␻ ⫺n ␻ ) by as small as 7⫻10⫺4 results in a shift
of 25 nm for the required fundamental wavelength and such
an error is beyond the resolution limit of the ellipsometry
measurements. For an input fundamental of ␭⫽1658.6 nm,
we see 9 ␮W at the second harmonic. This graph is, how-

冑
ever, very broad and does not have the characteristic sinc-
1.129␭ 2 1.532⫻105 ␭ 2
n e共 ␭ 兲 ⫽ 4.1983⫹ ⫹ , squared function that is expected from periodically poled
␭ 2 ⫺1.067⫻105 ␭ 2 ⫺5.825⫻1012 structures. The reason for this behavior can be understood by
共2兲 way of Fig. 5. Figure 5 is the measured frequency spectrum

冑
of the input pulse with its peak power at 1703.6 nm. We see
2.547␭ 2 5.142⫻104 ␭ 2 that the spectrum is very broad as would be expected for a
n o共 ␭ 兲 ⫽ 2.6362⫹ ⫹ ,
␭ 2 ⫺4.629⫻104 ␭ 2 ⫺3.188⫻1012 pulse of 130 fs. As the center wavelength of the input laser is
共3兲 changed, the whole spectrum is shifted with its peak at the
new wavelength position. When the wavelength of the laser
where ␭ is given in nanometers, n e is the extraordinary index
is moved from ␭⫽1658.6 nm to ␭⫽1638.6 nm, we still see
and n o is the ordinary index. Based on our measured indices,
second harmonic power 共about 2 ␮W兲 since there is still a
we determined that our ⌳⫽17.2 ␮ m PPGaN was actually
significant amount of power seen at ␭⫽1658.6 nm. The po-
designed to perform SHG at ⬃␭⫽1633 nm.
larization dependence of the second harmonic was also tested

FIG. 2.
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is copyrighted profiles forinboth
as indicated the ordinary and extraordinary
article. Reuse axes of
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GaN for our growth conditions. FIG. 4. Second-harmonic power as a function of the peak laser wavelength.
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 Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 83, No. 6, 11 August 2003 Chowdhury et al. 1079

The authors would like to thank George Chu for polish-

ing the sample and Gang Chen for help with the tunable
laser. The authors gratefully acknowledge Richart E. Slusher
and Federico Capasso for encouragement and support to pur-
sue this work. M.B. contributed to this work as a Lucent
Summer Intern at Bell Laboratories; his current address is
ECE Dept., University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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