Arrays of 850 nm photodiodes and vertical cavity surface emitting lasers for 25 to 40 Gbit/s optical interconnects

We report the design and characterization of arrays of compact, energy efficient, multi- and single-mode GaAs-based 850 nm vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) and complementary p-i-n photodiodes (PDs) for 25 to 40 Gb/s optical interconnection applications in computing and data communications. Using foundry service epitaxial growth and processing we obtain over 50k operational devices from each 76.2 mm-diameter wafer. Using randomly selected on-wafer-probed, individually-probed, and packaged VCSEL and PD dice for single-channel link tests we consistently achieve record error-free operation (defined as a bit error ratio (BER) of less than 1x10-12) at 25 Gbit/s over up to 500 m of OM3 multimode optical fiber. We use our high speed VCSELs to characterize our high speed PDs and vice versa, and achieve open optical eye diagrams at up to 40 Gbit/s (© 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)