Semiconductors for Lasers

The fact that semiconductor laser diodes are made from semiconductors is in large part responsible for their success. Semiconductor materials exist in great variety, resulting in a large range of accessible laser wavelengths, and the optical gain per unit volume in optically active semiconductor materials is so high that lasers of very small physical volume may be conceived. This latter fact becomes doubly relevant when we consider that semiconductor process technology, highly developed for the fabrication of electronic integrated circuits, may be applied to the manufacture of semiconductor lasers. As a result, these may be produced in large volumes, with high precision and at low cost.