Early blue/green laser diodes based on ZnSe exhibited room temperature, continuous wave (cw) lifetimes of the order of a minute. Similar to the history of (Al,Ga)As lasers, the source of the degradation was the presence of extended crystalline defects. The dominant extended defects in the early room temperature cw lasers originated as stacking faults generated at the ZnSe/GaAs heterovalent nucleation event, and exhibited densities of the order of 106cm−2. In this letter, a procedure is described which will ensure a consistent run to run reduction of the density of such extended defects to the mid to low 103cm−2over a 3 in. wafer. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.