We found that GaAs surface passivation is key to minimize losses in a gated semiconductor microcavity and thus increase its quality factor by almost two orders of magnitude. The procedure not only eliminates a Franz-Keldysh-like surface loss inherent to gated semiconductor microcavities, but also mitigates the effect of surface scattering due to roughness. We elucidate these findings in our open-access publication at Physical Review Applied.