Funded by NSF

Objective: to develop high performance 1300-1600nm VCSELs with applications to WDM arrays and fiber optic transmission.

The proposed all-epitaxial structure is InP-based with AlGaAsSb DBR mirrors and is grown by MBE.

Professor Coldren’s group has previously demonstrated CW operation up to 88?C with >1mW output power at room temperature.

Novel aperturing techniques are being investigated for current and optical confinement to reduce threshold currents and improve differential efficiencies.

We seek to improve the high temperature performance by investigating carrier confinement layers to reduce the vertical leakage over heterobarriers.
We will also explore techniques for lateral carrier confinement.

Growth technology will be further optimized to improve the yield of low voltage tunnel junctions based on InP and AlGaInAs, low optical loss high-index contrast DBRs, and high conductivity InP layers.

InP-based lattice matched VCSEL with selectively etched tunnel junction for current and optical confinement.