Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers Specifically Designed For Integration With Electronic Circuits

This paper describes the development of VCSELs based on a new design paradigm. The paramount objective of this design approach was a fabrication platform, which would reproducibly yield high efficiency devices that could easily be integrated and operated with electronic circuitry. In general, the P sup 2 I sup 2-VCSEL design strategy is to use processing steps, which define device features with photolithographic precision, exclusively, and to combine an intra-cavity contacted current guide with an independent optical beam guide to realize the above objective. Note that both contacts, dual lateral current injection layers, and the requisite current aperture, are all intra-cavity located. The beam guide is a feature that can be made and optimized, independently of the current guide and the mirrors. It helps the light to resonate between the mirror stacks as efficiently as possible, as it passes back and forth through the current aperture, the contact openings, as the many reflecting interfaces. The formation of the two guides is greatly facilitated when the top mirror is a dielectric stack, deposited and patterned at the end of the fabrication sequence.