Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers

The development and application of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are summarized in this paper. The emphasis is focused on the high power single and 2-D arrays bottom-emitting VCSELs with a wavelength of 980nm. A distinguished device performance is achieved. The maximum continuous-wave (CW) output power of large aperture single devices with active diameters up to 500μm is as high as 1.95W at room temperature, which is to our knowledge the highest value reported for a single device. Size dependence of the output power, the threshold current and the differential resistance are discussed. A 16 elements array with 200μm aperture size (250μm center spacing) of individual elements shows a CW output power of 1.32W at room temperature.