Abstract

Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have been greatly improved and successfully commercialized over the past few decades owing to their ability to provide both mode and current confinement that enables low energy consumption, high efficiency and high modulation speed. However, further improvement of oxide VCSELs is limited by the nature of the oxide aperture because of self-heating, internal strain and difficulties in precise size control. In this dissertation, VCSELs using lithographic approach are demonstrated to overcome the limitations of oxide VCSELs, in which an intra-cavity phase shifting mesa is applied to define the device size and provide optical mode and electrical current confinement instead of an oxide aperture. A newly developed model of intrinsic modulation response is proposed and analyzed to focus on the thermal limit of the modulation speed of VCSELs. The results show that both the temperature dependent differential gain and stimulated emission rate impact laser speed and the stimulated emission rate dominates the speed limit. Thermal limits of modulation response are compared for oxide and lithographic VCSELs for various sizes. The results predict that the intrinsic modulation response can be significantly increased by using lithographic VCSELs due to low thermal resistance and reduced mode volume while maintaining high efficiency. The intrinsic bandwidth could exceed 100 GHz for a 2-?m-diameter lithographic VCSEL. Combined with low electrical parasitics, it is expected to produce over 100 Gb/s data rate from a single directly modulated laser. VCSELs designed for high speed are discussed and their characteristics are demonstrated.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2016

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Deppe, Dennis

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Optics and Photonics

Department

Optics and Photonics

Degree Program

Optics and Photonics

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0006346

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0006346

Language

English

Release Date

August 2019

Length of Campus-only Access

3 years

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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