Vertical cavity surface emitting laser of 1.55 μm spectral range, manufactured by molecular beam epitaxy and wafer fusion technique

The heterostructure design for 1.55 μm range VCSELs is proposed and realized. The wafer fusion technique was used to form the final heterostructure. The growth of AlGaAs/GaAs distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) on GaAs substrate and the optical cavity with an active region on InP substrate as well as a tunnel junction (TJ) regrowth was performed by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). A key feature of the proposed design is the use of n⁺⁺-InGaAs/p⁺⁺-InGaAs/p⁺⁺-InAlGaAs TJ, which allows, due to the effective removal of oxide from the InGaAs surface, to use MBE for re-growth of the TJ surface relief. Despite of the presence in heterostructure a narrow-gap InGaAs layers, a noticeable increase in internal optical loss in lasers can be avoided due to the short-wavelength shift of the edge of interband light absorption in ⁺⁺-InGaAs layers (Burshtein-Moss effect). Fabricated VCSELs demonstrate single-mode operation with a threshold current less than 2 mA and a slope efficiency of ~ 0.46 W/A, which are comparable with characteristics of VCSELs with n⁺⁺/p⁺⁺-InAlGaAs TJ with a similar level of mirror losses.