SEMICONDUCTOR OPTICAL ELEMENT, SEMICONDUCTOR LASER ELEMENT, MANUFACTURING METHOD THEREFOR, AND METHOD FOR MANUFACTURING SEMICONDUCTOR LASER MODULE AND SEMICONDUCTOR ELEMENT

摘要

A semiconductor optical element provided with a layered semiconductor part that has an optical waveguide layer. Between the outermost surface of the layered semiconductor part and the optical waveguide layer, the layered semiconductor part contains a first impurity that has the ability to inhibit atomic vacancy diffusion and a second impurity that has the ability to promote atomic vacancy diffusion. The layered semiconductor part has at least two regions, extending in the layering direction, that contain different amounts of at least one of the aforementioned impurities. At least one of said regions contains both the first impurity and the second impurity. The crystal mixture ratio of the optical waveguide layer due to atomic vacancy diffusion and the band-gap energy of the optical waveguide layer are different in each region.