Research Article
Integrated Duo Wavelength VCSEL Using an
Electrically Pumped GaInAs/AlGaAs 980 nm Cavity at
the Bottom and an Optically Pumped GaInAs/AlGaInAs
1550 nm Cavity on the Top
Samiha Ishrat Islam,
1
Arnob Islam,
2
and Saiful Islam
3
1
Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, American International University-Bangladesh, Dhaka 1213, Bangladesh
2
Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Northern University Bangladesh, Dhaka 1213, Bangladesh
3
Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh
Correspondence should be addressed to Saiful Islam; sislamk@yahoo.com
Received 10 April 2014; Revised 17 August 2014; Accepted 20 August 2014; Published 29 October 2014
Academic Editor: Zhihao Chen
Copyright © 2014 Samiha Ishrat Islam et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
In this work, an integrated single chip dual cavity VCSEL has been designed which comprises an electrically pumped 980nm
bottom VCSEL section fabricated using GaInAs/AlGaAs MQW active region and a 1550 nm top VCSEL section constructed using
GaInAs/AlGaInAs MQW active region but optically pumped using half of the produced 980nm light entering into it from the
electrically pumped bottom cavity. In this design, the active region of the intracavity structure 980 nm VCSEL consists of 3 quantum
wells (QWs) using Ga
0.847
In
0.153
As, 2 barriers using Al
0.03
Ga
0.97
As, and 2 separate confnement heterostructures (SCH) using the
same material as the barrier. Te active region of the top emitting 1550 nm VCSEL consists of 3 QWs using Ga
0.47
In
0.52
As, 2 barriers
using Al
0.3
Ga
0.17
In
0.53
As, and 2 SCHs using the same material as the barrier. Te top DBR and the bottom DBR mirror systems of
the 1550 nm VCSEL section plus the top and bottom DBR mirror systems of the 980 nm VCSEL section have been formed using
GaAs/Al
0.8
Ga
0.2
As. Computations show that the VCSEL is capable of producing 8.5 mW of power at 980 nm from the bottom side
and 2 mW of power at the 1550 nm from top side.
1. Introduction
It is well known that 850 nm–980 nm (short wavelength) and
1300 nm–1550 nm (long wavelength) MQW edge emitting
diode lasers are widely used in optical communication
systems [1, 2]. For these wavelengths, VCSELs are much better
because of the many well-known advantages of VCSELs [3].
Conventional VCSELs are electrically pumped by injection
current. In such a device, undesirable heating happens due to
the fow of injection current through the layers of materials
of the top and bottom DBR mirror systems. To eliminate this
unwanted heating, intracavity structure has been used by the
designers although this may introduce slight complexity in
fabricating the VCSELs.
VCSEL with good beam quality (single transverse mode)
greatly reduces the complexity of beam-shaping optics (com-
pared to edge emitters) and increases the coupling efciency
to the fber or pumped medium [4]. Unfortunately, poor
beam quality is obtained from conventional electrically
pumped VCSELs due to lasing of higher order transverse
modes with even relatively small active diameters [4]. A
transverse single-mode operation from large-area devices
(large beam diameter) is always advantageous since such
devices can provide low thermal resistance and high output
power at small divergence angles [4].
In an electrically pumped VCSEL, it is not possible to
inject carriers uniformly across a wide area for a large beam
diameter in the laser cavity by traditional diode current
injection [4]. As a result, other transverse modes are gen-
erated beside fundamental transverse mode which in turn
degrades beam quality of the laser [4]. In order to mitigate
this problem, a thick doped semiconductor current spreading
layer can be used. But such a doped layer has strong free
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
International Scholarly Research Notices
Volume 2014, Article ID 627165, 10 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/627165