Electrically Injected GaN-Based Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers with TiO2 High-Index-Contrast Grating Reflectors

• We demonstrate the first electrically injected GaN-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with a TiO2 high-index-contrast grating (HCG) as the top mirror. Replacing the top distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) with an HCG offers substantial thickness reduction, polarization-pinning, and setting of the resonance wavelength by the grating parameters. Conventional HCGs are usually suspended in the low refractive index material, such as air, in order to create the largest refractive index contrast. However, the mechanical stability of such structures can be questioned and creating free-hanging GaN-membrane on top of GaN is problematic. We have therefore fabricated TiO2-HCGs resting directly on GaN without an air-gap. No DBR layers are used below the HCG to boost the reflectivity. A VCSEL with an aperture diameter of 10 μm shows a threshold current of 25 mA under pulsed operation at room temperature. The lasing modes locate around 400 nm and are transversely electrically -polarized with a line width of 0.5 nm. The full-width half-maximum beam divergence is 10°. This demonstration of a TiO2-HCG VCSEL offers a new route to achieve polarization pinning and could also allow additional benefits such as postgrowth setting of the resonance wavelength.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Atom- och molekylfysik och optik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Annan fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Other Physics Topics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Den kondenserade materiens fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Condensed Matter Physics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

TiO 2

polarization selectivity

vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser

HCG

VCSEL

electrically driven device

microcavity

high-index-contrast grating

GaN

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)