Semiconductor light emitting device

摘要

A semiconductor light emitting device using nitride III-V compound semiconductors is improved to reduce the threshold current density with almost no increase of the operation voltage. In a GaN semiconductor laser as one version thereof, the p-type cladding layer (10) is made of two or more semiconductor layers (10a, 10b) different in band gap, and a part (10a) of the p-type cladding layer (10) near one of its boundaries nearer to the active layer is made of a semiconductor layer having a larger band gap than that of the remainder part (10b). More specifically, in a AlGaN/GaN/GaInN SCH-structured GaN semiconductor laser, a p-type AlGaN cladding layer (10) is made of a p-type Alx1Ga1-x1N layer (10a) in contact with a p- type GaN optical guide layer (9), and a p-type Alx2Ga1-x2N layer (10b) overlying the p-type Alx1Ga1-x1N layer (10a) (where 0≤x2<x1≤1). <IMAGE>