Bipolar Cascade Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers for RF Photonic Link Applications

摘要

The development and demonstration of bipolar cascade vertical cavity surface emitting lasers is presented. The systematic approach to designing, fabricating, and characterizing the critical tunnel junction, incorporating the tunnel junction into an edge emitting bipolar cascade laser, and finally the transition to a VCSEL structure is detailed. A novel approach prior to growing and characterizing BC VCSELs was to investigate bipolar cascade light emitting diodes which incorporate the microcavity designs and disentangles the VCSEL cavity effects from the microcavity. The best performing p-doped oxide aperture microcavity design was then used as the microcavity for 1-, 2-, and 3-stage BC VCSELs. The high-frequency modulation characteristics of GaAs-based BC VCSELs operating at 980 nm with GaAs tunnel junctions and p-doped Al(0.98)Ga(0.02)As oxide apertures have been measured and analyzed. Measured -3 dB laser output modulations of 4.5 GHz for 2-stage and 7.1 GHz for 3-stage devices in response to small-signal current injection at an operating temperature of -50 deg C are reported and discussed.