Indium-Based Micro-Bump Array Fabrication Technology with Added Pre-Reflow Wet Etching and Annealing.

Indium-based micro-bump arrays, among other things, are used for the bonding of infrared photodetectors and focal plane arrays. In this paper, several aspects of the fabrication technology of micrometer-sized indium bumps with a smooth surface morphology were investigated. The thermal evaporation of indium has been optimized to achieve ~8 µm-thick layers with a small surface roughness of Ra = 11 nm, indicating a high packing density of atoms. This ensures bump uniformity across the sample, as well as prevents oxidation inside the In columns prior to the reflow. A series of experiments to optimize indium bump fabrication technology, including a shear test of single columns, is described. A reliable, repeatable, simple, and quick approach was developed with the pre-etching of indium columns in a 10% HCl solution preceded by annealing at 120 °C in N2.

Intra-pulse beam steering in a mid-infrared quantum cascade laser.

The intra-pulse measurements of the beam steering in an AlGaAs/GaAs quantum cascade laser are presented in this paper. The experimental results are explained by a two-mode theoretical model. The near field of the laser radiation is calculated according to the effective index method and transposed to the far field numerically according to Huygens principle. The maximal observed value of deflection of the beam has been found to be [Formula: see text]. For supply currents in the range from 1.6 to 2.4 times the threshold the beam steering occurs only on one side of the resonator axis, and stays is the same for all current values. For higher supply current, it occurs alternately on both sides and exhibits a bistability. The time period of the beam direction change has been found to be about 40 ns for the lowest current and was decreasing with the current increase to about 20 ns.