Uniform wafer-bonded oxide-confined bottom-emitting 850-nm VCSEL arrays on sapphire substrates

Uniform bottom-emitting 850-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays on sapphire substrates have been demonstrated using wafer bonding technology to transfer the epitaxially-grown VCSEL structures from GaAs substrates onto sapphire substrates. The uniformity of the VCSEL arrays were improved by placing thin oxide aperture at the standing wave node to reduce scattering loss for small aperture devices. The averaged threshold current of a 5/spl times/5 VCSEL array is as low as 346 /spl mu/A, while the averaged external quantum efficiency approaches 57%. The maximum wall-plug efficiency is 25% and the single-mode output power is more than 2 mW under continuous-wave current excitation at room temperature. We have also demonstrated a large (10/spl times/20) VCSEL array with variations of threshold current and external quantum efficiency less than 4% and 2%, respectively.