Monolithically Peltier-cooled vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Abstract

We report the first tunable monolithically integrated thermoelectric controlled GaAs/AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diode. The thermoelectric element is the n+-GaAs substrate based on the Peltier effect. A variation of active region temperature of ±7.5 °C has been achieved using ±100 mA of thermoelectric cooler current. The observed wavelength tuning associated with this temperature shift is ±6 Å. The device is useful for applications that require a high degree of frequency stability or small frequency tuning. Some examples of potential applications are in high data rate lightwave transmission, self-electro-optic device switches, and spectroscopy.