Performance optimisation of epitaxially regrown 1.3-μm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

A number of GaAs-based long-wavelength, vertical-cavity, surface-emitting laser structures with optical and electrical confinement based on selective area epitaxy have been fabricated and evaluated. The influence on output power, threshold current, thermal stability and modal properties from design parameters such as bottom-distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) doping, cavity doping, dielectric top DBR design and carrier confinement barriers is evaluated. More than 7 mW of output power is emitted from multimode devices with a square active region size of 10 mm. Single-mode power from smaller devices is restricted to 1.5 mW because of a non-optimal cavity shape.