Abstract

Optoelectronic-integrated-circuit (OEIC) transmitters,¹ which integrate laser diodes and driving circuits on a single chip, have great potential advantages over hybrid circuits in terms of speed, functionality, reliability, scalability, and cost. The major difficulties involved in OEIC transmitter fabrication lie not only in the incompatibility of material parameters and device structures, but also in the requirement of having a very low threshold current for minimizing heat dissipation on the chip and the necessity of facet formation by a cleaving or etching process, which limits the layout freedom and scalability of the entire circuit. The vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (SEL) developed in recent years² has many advantageous features, such as a very low threshold current (<2 mA),³ single-mode operation,⁴ a small device area, and, in particular, no need for mirror formation and a two-dimensional (2-D) integration capability. Thus it is the best light source for 2-D OEIC transmitter arrays. In this paper we present the first demonstration, to our knowledge, of the monolithic integration of a SEL and a MESFET.

© 1993 Optical Society of America