Abstract

Vertical-cavity surface-emitting semiconductor lasers have a number of distinct advantages over their more conventional edge-emitting counterparts. They are significantly smaller, can be fabricated into compact two-dimensional arrays, and can be batch-processed in large numbers potentially leading to significant cost reductions, especially in integrated optoelectronic designs incorporating multiple lasers. Though such vertical-cavity structures have been studied for almost a decade,¹ interest in them has burgeoned recently, spurred by the first demonstration of threshold currents in the 1 mA range,² a level comparable to that of the best edge-emitting devices.

© 1991 Optical Society of America