Impact of Diffusion Profile on the Modulation Response of Single-Mode Disorder-Defined VCSELs

The impact of diffusion profile shaping through the use of tensilely and compressively strained diffusion masks on the modulation response of single-mode vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) using disorder-defined apertures is investigated. VCSELs designed for high-power single-fundamental-mode emission through the use apertures defined via impurity-induced disordering (IID) in conjunction with a standard oxide-confinement process are characterized to extract high-frequency optical cavity parameters across oxide aperture and diffusion mask strain variations. The 3-dB small-signal bandwidth is maintained for a 7.68 mW single-mode 850 nm VCSEL with an oxide aperture of 13 μm using a tensilely strained diffusion mask relative to a non-disordered multimode device of the same oxide aperture. A large K-factor reduction is also observed, from 0.248 ns to 0.045 ns, indicating that damping and photon lifetimes within the cavity of VCSELs employing disorder-defined apertures are substantially reduced. Performance implications to data communication applications are discussed.