In-situ etching with CBr4 has been used to form buried Bragg gratings in AlGaAs-based broad area diode lasers with distributed feedback (DFB-BA) by pattern transfer into In0.49Ga0.51P within the MOVPE reactor. STEM/EDXS measurements show that the Bragg grating is finally formed by 10 nm thick In0.49Ga0.51P stripes that are fully embedded in AlxGa1-xAs. The oxygen sheet concentration at the regrowth interface is found by SIMS to be below 1 x 10(16) cm(-2) DFB-BA lasers fabricated using in-situ etching of the grating reach optical output power > 12W and peak wall-plug efficiencies > 60%. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.