High-power VCSEL arrays with customized beam divergence for 3D-sensing applications

Abstract

The demand for high-power vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays is increasing continuously due to the growing market for 3D sensing solutions. In these applications (e.g. face recognition or drive-assistance systems), the distances of the objects of interest vary by orders of magnitude. For this reason, a flexible tailoring of the beam divergence is desired. In this work, we discuss methods to tune the emitted beam profile by only optimizing the epitaxial structure of a VCSEL. We show results of VCSEL arrays with beam divergences ranging between ~10° and 45°. This technique is also power scalable and multi-watt VCSEL arrays can be realized.