IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 25, NO.
4, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
1060-nm Tunable Monolithic High Index Contrast
Subwavelength Grating VCSEL
Thor Ansbæk, Il-Sug Chung, Elizaveta S. Semenova, and Kresten Yvind
Abstract— We present the first tunable vertical-cavity surface-
emitting laser (VCSEL) where the top distributed Bragg reflector
has been completely substituted by an air-cladded high-index-
contrast subwavelength grating (HCG) mirror. In this way, an
extended cavity design can be realized by reducing the reflection
at the semiconductor–air interface using an anti-reflective coating
(ARC). We demonstrate how the ARC can be integrated in a
monolithic structure by oxidizing AlGaAs with high Al-content.
The HCG VCSEL has the potential to achieve polarization
stable single-mode output with high tuning efficiency. The HCG
VCSEL shows a total tuning range of 16 nm around an emission
wavelength of 1060 nm with 1-mW output power.
Index Terms— III-V semiconductor materials, microelectro-
mechanical systems, semiconductor lasers, vertical cavity surface
emitting lasers.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T UNABLE semiconductor lasers emitting at a wavelength
of 1060 nm have potential applications within short-reach
optical interconnects and optical coherence tomography (OCT)
[1], [2]. Air-cavity tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting
lasers (VCSELs) enable the broadband tunability required for
high-resolution OCT imaging and wavelength-division multi-
plexing for optical interconnects [2]. 102 nm tuning range at
1550 nm has been reported for air-cavity mechanically-tunable
electrically-pumped VCSELs [3]. It is generally recognized
that the tuning range can be extended by using an anti-
reflective coating (ARC) at the air-semiconductor interface and
this has been implemented by using a monolithic inverted
distributed bragg reflector (DBR) or micromachined low-
refractive-index ARC [3], [4]. We show the first incorporation
of a monolithic low-refractive-index ARC. Polarization stable
output is desirable for OCT in order to amplify the output
power of the VCSEL using semiconductor optical amplifiers.
Polarization control can be achieved by using a subwavelength
grating, which has been demonstrated in VCSELs where
part of the DBR has been replaced by a high-index contrast
subwavelength grating (HCG) [5]. Here we present a VCSEL
with a bottom DBR, an ARC and a top HCG surrounded by
air grown in a single epitaxial step. This demonstrates that a
Manuscript received September 7, 2012; revised November 7, 2012;
accepted December 12, 2012. Date of publication December 21, 2012; date
of current version January 24, 2013.
The authors are with the Department of Photonics Engineering,
Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby 2800, Denmark (e-mail:
tans@fotonik.dtu.dk; ilch@fotonik.dtu.dk; esem@fotonik.dtu.dk; kryv@
fotonik.dtu.dk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2012.2236087
1041–1135/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
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365
MEMS contact
HCG
Laser anode/ n-GaAs
MEMS contact Sacrificial layer ARC
p-GaAs
oxide aperture
MQW
n-DBR
n-GaAs substrate
Laser cathode
Fig. 1. Schematic drawing of the VCSEL structure cut though the middle
of the device.
single layer HCG can fully replace the growth of a top DBR
and further enable polarization control.
II. D EVICE S TRUCTURE
The structure of the HCG VCSEL is shown in Fig. 1.
The first part of the VCSEL structure up until the ARC
is similar to that reported in [6] where strain-compensated
InGaAs/GaAsP multiple quantum wells (MQWs) provide gain.
To enable wavelength tunability part of the cavity is made up
of an air-gap. In order to increase the tuning efficiency we
use the extended cavity design where an ARC reduces the
reflection at the air-semiconductor interface. By replacing the
top DBR with an HCG mirror a stable output polarization can
be ensured [5], [7]. The bottom reflector is a 35 pair silicon
doped n-Al0.9 Ga0.1 As/n-GaAs DBR with a Bragg wavelength
λ B = 1060 nm. The DBR is followed by a semiconductor
cavity with an optical thickness of 1.77λ B . The MQW active
region consists of 3 strained In0.3 Ga0.7 As wells with strain-
balancing GaAs0.8 P0.2 barriers. The position of the center
quantum well is designed to be at the intensity anti-node at
λ = λ B . The electric field magnitude is calculated using 1D
rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA), by which also the
nonzero reflection phase of the HCG is accounted for [8].
To ensure single transverse mode operation an Al0.98 Ga0.02 As
layer is oxidized to create an aperture which is positioned
close to the field node. A p-GaAs current spreading layer
doped to 5 × 1018 cm−3 is used as intra-cavity contact to
the pin-junction. The current spreading layer is followed by a
Al0.98 Ga0.02 As layer later to be oxidized to an ARC at the
 366
MEMS
contact
HCG
2 m
50 m VCSEL
contact
Fig. 2. Scanning electron micrograph of the VCSEL. The MEMS contact,
HCG, and ARC are highlighted.
semiconductor-air interface. The as-grown thickness of the
Al0.98 Ga0.02 As layer has been intentionally increased by 6.7%
to account for shrinkage as the layer is oxidized to the final
λ B /2 optical thickness. Earlier experimental and numerical
investigations show how an ARC can increase the tuning
efficiency [3], [9]. The air-gap is defined using a 560 nm
Al0.52 In0.48 P layer as sacrificial material, with the thickness
being determined such that the air-gap is 7/6 · λ B /2 minus the
HCG reflection phase equivalent propagation length. The final
n-doped GaAs layer functions as the micro-electro-mechanical
system (MEMS) as well as the HCG mirror, which allows to
change the air-gap thickness by using electro-static force.
The growth is done on “2” n-doped GaAs wafers by using
metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy (MOVPE) with a rotating
disk reactor (Emcore D-125 Turbodisc). The MEMS and HCG
is patterned by e-beam lithography and Cl2 dry etching using
the negative resist hydrogen silsesquioxane (FOx-12) as a
hard mask. We have designed the HCG to have broadband
reflectivity around λ B for light with the electric field polarized
perpendicular to the grating stripes and for this have chosen a
duty cycle of 0.72, pitch of 460 nm and thickness of 280 nm.
The MEMS mesa and oxidation mesa are both patterned by
ultraviolet (UV) positive photolithography and wet etching.
The Al0.98 Ga0.02 As oxide aperture layer was oxidized in steam
ambient to a nominal oxide aperture diameter of 8 μm.
The top laser anode and MEMS contacts were patterned by
lift-off lithography with a Pd/Ge/Pt/Ti/Au metal stack [10].
This allows a contact to be made to both the p-doped laser
anode and n-doped MEMS layer simultaneously. The bottom
laser cathode was metallized by Ni/Ge/Au and both con-
tacts alloyed by rapid thermal annealing (RTA). The final
step is the definition of the air-gap through wet etching
of the sacrificial layer [11]. The air-gap is necessary for
the tunable wavelength design, but a highly single-mode
polarization stable VCSEL can also be achieved by sim-
ply omitting the sacrificial layer since the low-refractive
index AlOx will provide enough index contrast for the
HCG. Figure 2 shows a scanning electron microscope (SEM)
image of the finished VCSEL with the MEMS contact,
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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 25, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
5 1.0
Voltage
o
15 C
4 o 0.8
20 C
o
25 C
o
3 30 C 0.6
Power (mW)
Voltage (V)
o
40 C
o
50 C
2 o 0.4
60 C
1 0.2
0 0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Current (mA)
Fig. 3. Plot of the voltage (left axis, dashed line) and optical power (right axis,
solid line) versus the laser current. The oxide aperture is 8.5 μm.
the ARC and the HCG visible. The HCG is suspended in
4 beams fixed to a support that is part of the substrate.
The beams will bend upon an attractive electro-static force
between the mirror and bottom substrate.
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
The light-current-voltage (LIV) characteristics have been
measured by using a laser driver and a wide-area silicon
photodiode. Figure 3 shows a plot of the LIV characteristics
of a HCG VCSEL. The laser threshold current is 1 mA and
the maximum output power is 0.9 mW at room-temperature
(20 °C). This is comparable to the performance for 1060 nm
VCSELs with a top DBR and the same quantum well struc-
ture [6]. Thermal roll-over is seen to occur around 10 mA
at room temperature and the VCSEL continues to lase up to
60 °C. The turn-on voltage is 1.5 V and the series resistance
220 . The major contributions to the series resistance is the
current spreading layer and the n-doped DBR which was uni-
formly doped to 2×1018 cm−3 . The optical spectrum has been
measured using an ANDO 6317B optical spectrum analyzer
by coupling part of the VCSEL output into a Corning SMF-
28e fiber. Figure 4 shows a plot of the optical spectrum (left
axis) for different applied MEMS voltages (right axis, open
circles). The VCSEL has a continuous tuning range of 16 nm,
which is limited by the pull-instability. This gives a tuning
efficiency δλ/δdair of 0.08 nm/nm, compared to a simulated
tuning efficiency of 0.2 nm/nm. Pull-in occurs for V = VPI
at a displacement of 1/3 of the initial gap distance g0 . In the
present case the pull-in voltage is around VPI = 35 V. The laser
continues to lase at the pull-in as the ARC protects the pin-
junction from breakdown, which would otherwise results due
to the high tuning voltages. For an HCG VCSEL with a initial
emission wavelength of 1070 nm we observe lasing at 1060 nm
in the pull-in state. This confirms that by removing the
sacrificial layer, single-mode polarization stable HCG VCSELs
can be made. The tuning range of 1.5% relative to the center
wavelength is similar to that reported by [5] with the differ-
ence that a continuous wavelength tuning is achieved in the
present device. Mode hopping has not been observed, which
we attribute to the use of the intra-cavity ARC combined with
 ANSBÆK et al.: 1060-nm TUNABLE MONOLITHIC HCG VCSEL
10 nm
-20
ILD = 5 mA
-30 o
TEC = 25 C
Intensity (dBm)
-40
-50
-60
-70
1050 1055 1060 1065
Wavelength (nm)
Fig. 4. Plot of optical spectrum (left axis) for different applied MEMS
voltages (right axis) versus wavelength. The oxide aperture is 8.5 μm.
Fig. 5. Plot of threshold current (left axis) and peak intensity (right axis)
versus the tuning voltage. The VCSEL has a oxide aperture of 8.5 μm.
a short optical cavity. The 3dB tuning range at 10 nm is shorter
than the complete single-mode tuning range. The side-mode
suppression-ratio (SMSR) is > 40 dB for the 3 dB tuning
range and drops due to a decrease in the peak intensity.
From measuring the light-current characteristic at increasing
voltage it has been found that the decline in output power
at increasing voltage (or decreasing wavelength) is due to an
increase in threshold current. Figure 5 shows the threshold
current (left, solid line) and lasing peak intensity (right, open
circles) versus tuning voltage for a HCG VCSEL with 8.5 μm
oxide aperture. With the wavelength blue shifted, i.e., the
voltage increasing, the threshold current increases rapidly
and the peak intensity decreases. The increase in threshold
current indicates that it is either an effect of increasing optical
loss or decreasing modal gain. Gierl et al. report a similar
dependency of the threshold current and optical output power
on the wavelength (analogous to the tuning voltage here) [3].
We expect that with optimized epitaxial design it will be
possible to increase the 3 dB tuning range. Assuming the
tuning range to be limited by decreasing optical confinement to
the quantum well region (decreasing modal gain) it would be
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367
expected that twice the tuning range could be obtained (Fig. 5
35
shows the threshold to be minimum at V = 0). The tuning
30 efficiency of 0.08 nm/nm is half the 0.16 nm/nm expected from
simulation. A possible explanation is that the optical thickness
25
of the ARC deviates from the nominal value. Gierl et al. have
MEMS voltage (V)
20 demonstrated 0.14 nm/nm tuning efficiency by using an ARC,
and we expect a higher tuning efficiency due to a shorter cavity
15 length [3].
10
IV. C ONCLUSION
5 We have demonstrated the first VCSEL where the top
p-doped DBR has been completely substituted by a air-cladded
0
1070 HCG mirror. In this way the optical cavity can be extended
by reducing the optical reflection at the semiconductor-air
interface, which helps to increase the tuning efficiency. The
first results for such a monolithic structure shows 10 nm wide
3 dB continuous tuning range for a voltage increasing to
30 V. Furthermore this is the first demonstration of monolithic
integration of an anti-reflective coating with a MEMS HCG
mirror.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank D. Larsson for discussions
on the device processing. They would also like to thank
J. M. Kim for his work on AlInP growth.
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