Described herein is a novel technique used to make novel thin III-V semiconductor cleaved facet edge emitting active optical devices, such as lasers and optical amplifiers. These fully processed laser platelets with both top side and bottom side electrical contacts can be thought of as freestanding optoelectronic building blocks that can be integrated as desired on diverse substrates for a number of applications, many of which are in the field of communications. The thinness of these platelets and the precision with which their dimensions are defined using the process described herein makes it conducive to assemble them in dielectric recesses on a substrate, such as silicon, as part of an end-fire coupled, coaxial alignment optoelectronic integration strategy. This technology has been used to integrate edge emitting lasers onto silicon substrates, a significant challenge in the field of silicon optoelectronics.