Impurity induced layer disordering (JILD) has been demonstrated as an extremely powerful technique for the fabrication of optoelectronic devices within the AlGaAs alloy system. The success of this technique in this material system is due in large part to the similarity of the lattice parameters between the two binary constituents in this system, AlAs and GaAs. There are many alloy systems in which it would be highly desirable to exploit the fabrication technique of JILD, but within which the binary alloy constituents are not so well matched in lattice parameter. Perhaps the most extensively explored of such systems are the AlGaInP alloy system lattice matched to a GaAs substrate and the InGaAsP alloy system lattice matched to an InP substrate.

Recently, a laser-scanning technique for patterning Si-induced layer disordering of GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructures has been reported. This process, called laserassisted disordering (LAD), has been successfully used to fabricate low threshold buried heterostructure lasers. In this report, the LAD process is studied in detail with scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry. The results are discussed in the context of device fabrication.