Threshold Characteristics Enhancement of a Single Mode 1.55 µm InGaAsP Photonic Crystal VCSEL for Optical Communication Systems

Abbas Majdabadi¹, Saeid Marjani^2*, Masoud Sabaghi¹

¹Laser and Optics Research School, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute (NSTRL), Tehran, Iran.
²Department of Electrical Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

DOI: 10.4236/opj.2014.410029                

Abstract

In the present work, we investigate threshold characteristics of a single mode 1.55 μm InGaAsP vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) with two different optical confinement structures. The device employs InGaAsP active region, which is sandwiched between GaAs/AlGaAs and GaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). The optical confinement introduced by the oxide aperture or a single defect photonic crystal design with holes etched throughout the whole structure, is compared with previous work. Photonic crystal VCSEL shows 30.86% and 57.02% lower threshold current than that of the similar oxide confined VCSEL and previous results, respectively. This paper provides key results of the threshold characteristics, including the threshold current and the threshold power. Results suggest that, the 1.55 μm InGaAsP photonic crystal VCSEL seems to be the most optimal one for light sources in high performance optical communication systems.

Keywords

Threshold Characteristics, Single Mode, VCSEL, Optical Communication Systems

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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