Spotted Custom Lenses to Tailor the Divergence of Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

Abstract

We demonstrate the output beam collimation of GaAs-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers by means of self-aligned polymer microlenses deposited on SU-8 pedestals using a cantilever-based spotter. We show that this fabrication technique ensures a reproducible lens shape because the contact angle and the deposited volume are constant for a given surface. Device properties are presented and compared to optical beam propagation modeling results. We demonstrate that the final beam divergence is only controlled by pedestal design parameters and can be reduced with this method by a factor 10 (to 1.2° for single-mode devices) with no significant lasing performance modification.