980nm Photonic Microcavity Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser

Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) is a type of semiconductor laser with laser beam perpendicular to the surface of the semiconductor substrate, as shown in Fig.1(a) [1]. VCSEL has many advantages, such as non-divergence output beam, fabrication and test on wafer, easy two-dimensional integration, and single longitudinal mode work. VCSEL is composed of an active region sandwiched between top and bottom highly reflective DBR mirror [2,3]. Generally high power VCSEL could be realized through large emission window, but suffers multi-mode operation due to the inhomogeneous current distribution across the active region. On the other hand single-mode operation is required in many applications including optical communications. Single-mode can transport longer distance and meet the requirements of high-speed data transmission [4,5]. Several approaches such as confined aperture less than 3m, proton implantation, oxide and proton implantation mixed structure have been reported to achieve single-mode VCSEL. Due to the small aperture of emission window, these VCSELs are lasing at low output power. Besides the requirements of high output power and single mode operation, the wavelength range of VCSEL is broadened by applying InAs quantum dots or InGaAsN quantum well of the wavelength range of 1300nm and nitride quantum well of the blue light range for the applications of fiber communication and display.