Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers for medical diagnosis

This thesis deals with the design and fabrication of tunable Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSELs). The focus has been the application of tunable VCSELs in medical diagnostics, specifically OCT. VCSELs are candidates as light sources for swept-source OCT where their high sweep rate, wide sweep range and high degree of coherence enable deep probing of tissue at acquisition rates that will eliminate the effects of rapid involuntary eye movements. The main achievement of the dissertation work has been the development of an electro-statically tunable VCSEL at 1060 nm with wide tuning range and high tuning rate. The VCSEL is highly single-mode and inherently polarization stable due to the use of a High-index Contrast subwavelength Grating (HCG). HCG VCSELs are presented with 1.5% relative tuning range at a tuning rate of 850 kHz. The thesis reports on the analysis of narrow linewidth Fabry-Perot filters with dissimilar mirrors and the design of such Fabry-Perot cavities for VCSELs. Fabrication of InGaAs multiple quantum wells with GaAsP strain balancing layers is covered together with the growth and wet chemical etching of InAlP. The fabrication of the proposed Fabry-Perot filters and VCSELs is outlined and the results on their characterization reported.