Internal device physics of 1.3-μm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser

We report on the simulation of 1.32μm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). The device comprises a tunnel junction for current and optical confinement and features intra-cavity ring contacts. Distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) in the GaAs/AlGaAs material system form the optical cavity and are wafer-bonded to InP-based spacers. The active region consists of five InAlGaAs quantum wells (QW). For the simulations, a thermodynamic transport model is used for electrical and thermal calculations while the optical modes are computed by solving the vectorial Helmholtz equation with an finite element (FE) solver. Calibrations show good agreement with measurements and on this basis, electrical benefits of the TJ are studied. Moreover, the physics of thermal rollover are analyzed.