Highly uniform vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers integrated with microlens arrays

Abstract—In this paper, work is described on the fabrication of highly uniform 8 8 arrays of GaAs–AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL’s). Oxide-confined VCSEL arrays show an average threshold current of 0.74 0.02 mA, an average output power of 2.05 0.03 mW at 8 mA and an average power conversion efficiency of 14.3%. Their wavelength is measured to be 967 0.35 nm over the array. In addition, we describe the align-ment and integration of these device arrays with arrays of refrac-tive microlenses to allow beam shaping typically required in system applications. Index Terms—Microlens arrays, optical interconnections, ver-tical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. I