Highly uniform vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers integrated with microlens arrays

Abstract

In this paper, work is described on the fabrication of highly uniform 8/spl times/8 arrays of GaAs-AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL's). Oxide-confined VCSEL arrays show an average threshold current of 0.74/spl plusmn/0.02 mA, an average output power of 2.05/spl plusmn/0.03 mW at 8 mA and an average power conversion efficiency of 14.3%. Their wavelength is measured to be 967/spl plusmn/0.35 nm over the array. In addition, we describe the alignment and integration of these device arrays with arrays of refractive microlenses to allow beam shaping typically required in system applications.