Patent ID: 7939354

Claim:
A method of fabricating a nitride semiconductor laser, comprising the steps of: preparing a substrate, the substrate having a crystalline mass, a primary surface, a back surface and a plurality of marker structures, the crystalline mass being made of a hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor, the primary surface and the back surface intersecting with a predetermined axis extending in the direction of a c-axis of the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor, the crystalline mass extending from the primary surface to the back surface of the substrate, each of the marker structures extending along a reference plane from the primary surface to the back surface of the substrate, and the reference plane being one of the following planes: a plane defined by the c-axis and an m-axis of the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor; a plane defined by the c-axis and an a-axis of the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor; cutting the substrate along a cutting plane to form a hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor wafer, the cutting plane intersecting with the plurality of the marker structures, the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor wafer having a primary surface, a back surface and a plurality of first markers, each of the first markers extending from the primary surface to the back surface of the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor wafer, each of the first markers comprising part of each of the marker structures, the primary surface of the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor wafer being one of semipolar and nonpolar; growing a number of semiconductor layers to form a stack of semiconductor layers, the stack of semiconductor layers including a plurality of gallium nitride based semiconductor layers for a semiconductor laser, the stack of semiconductor layers having second markers, the second markers extending in the gallium nitride based semiconductor layers, the second markers being formed on the first markers, the plurality of gallium nitride based semiconductor layers being epitaxially grown on the primary surface of the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor wafer; forming an insulating film on the stack of semiconductor layers, the insulating film having openings, and the openings extending in the direction of the second markers; forming electrodes on the insulating film and the stack of semiconductor layers to form a substrate product, after the formation of the insulating film; and cleaving the substrate product at a cleavage plane of the hexagonal gallium nitride semiconductor, after the formation of the electrodes.