Progress in planarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser devices and arrays

We report batch-processed, totally planar, vertical-cavity top surface emitting GaAs/AlGaAs laser devices and arrays. Different size devices are studied experimentally. We measure continuous-wave threshold currents down to 1.7 mA and output powers > 3.7 mW at room temperature. We also discuss interesting characteristics such as differential quantum efficiencies exceeding unity and multi-transverse mode behavior. An array having 64 X 1 individually-accessed elements is characterized and shown to have uniform room-temperature continuous-wave operating characteristics in threshold current approximately equals 2.1 +/- 0.1 mA, wavelength approximately equals 849.4 +/- 0.8 nm, and output power approximately equals 0.5 +/- 0.1 mW.