Abstract

Several types of surface emitting laser diodes have been fabricated by various groups: the etched mirror device; the vertical cavity device², and the second order distributed Bragg reflector device³. Operating characteristics of vertical cavity devices have been poor in comparison to the other surface emitter types, however, some characteristics still make it very attractive in potential applications. With the development of high quality epitaxial multilayers of GaAs and AlGaAs for use as mirrors⁴ and simultaneously as conducting layers, it should be possible to realize vertical cavity devices which operate continuously and are usable in two dimensional array technology. Theoretically, a packing density of one device per four square mils is realizable and thus when scaling to areal arrays, lower optical output per device at a given operating current may be overcome by increased packing density in high power applications. The fabrication of monolithic arrays in this technology is greatly simplified and does not require difficult processing steps for optical output coupling perpendicular to the wafer. Vertical structures are also attractive in the arena of vertical integration of emitters and intracavity loss devices with applications in two dimensional arrays of optical logic elements or controlled modulation independent of emitter bias.

© 1987 Optical Society of America