Single-transverse-mode 3.4-mW emission of oxide-confined 780-nm VCSELs

The authors have fabricated oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with metal apertures exhibiting a spatial mode filtering effect. Single-mode continuous-wave output is enhanced up to 3.4 mW by this effect for AlGaAs-based 780-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with a 3.5-μm-diameter oxide aperture. From numerical calculations, the round-trip loss difference between zeroth- and first-order optical modes as a function of metal aperture size indicates that there is an optimum point; a 4-μm metal aperture size is suitable for higher order mode suppression of a 3.5-μm oxide aperture device.