Reliability of ridge waveguide distributed feedback lasers for communications applications: from device specification and failure analysis to life-time calculation

In this work, we describe how, from the early stages of device characterization, it is possible to evaluate the suitability of a given device design for the long life-time demand of a challenging deployment environment (uncooled, non-hermetic operation). Understanding the reasons for non-compliance and device failure, as well as their clear association with the device fabrication procedure steps, greatly helps to systematically improve the device quality yield for volume production.