Coretek (United States)

A new class of microelectromechanically tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with a half-symmetric cavity structure is described. The cavity is realized by inducing a curvature (R/spl sim/320 μm) in the top movable dielectric mirror. The microcavity forces lasing oscillations in a single fundamental spatial mode of approximately 6 μm despite the 20 μm electrical aperture of the device. The device wavelength was tunable from 863 to 833 nm under a 13-V voltage swing. The device operates in a single fundamental mode with sidemode supression ratio of >20 dB throughout the tuning range.

A GaAs/AlAs microcavity containing six InGaAs quantum wells was grown, and the sample was then etched via chemically-assisted ion-beam etching to form 50-μm-diam cylindrical mesas. The formation of native oxides, accomplished by baking the samples at 400 °C in the presence of a pressurized N2/H2O vapor line, lowered the refractive index of the AlAs layers to 1.5. The higher refractive index contrast more effectively confined the intracavity field, leading to well-resolved reflectivity dips with an exciton-polariton splitting of 6.72 nm=9.44 meV at room temperature.