Effect of electrostatic discharge on power output and reliability of 850 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Abstract

Articles you may be interested inMultiwavelength fabrication of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers based on asymmetric one-dimensional photonic crystalInterpretation of polarization pinning due to scattering loss differentiation in asymmetric vertical-cavity surfaceemitting laser cavitiesIn this article, we investigate the influence of electrostatic discharge ͑ESD͒ stress voltage on the device performance of 850 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers ͑VCSELs͒. The ESD effect induces dark-region defects, which act as nonradiative recombination centers in the active layer and increase the leakage current and degrade the light output power. Without ESD stress voltage, the VCSELs exhibit multiple transverse mode. However, the devices exhibit a weak but single fundamental mode with smaller beam divergence by increasing the stress voltage up to 2.6 kV. In addition, the VCSELs have serious degradation in light output power and a lifetime of less than 5 h at stress voltage beyond the ESD threshold voltage of 1.2 kV.