Low-threshold surface-emitting optical devices

Since the advent of semiconductor lasers, the reduction of threshold current has been an important research theme, because zero-bias modulation and low consumption of power are expected. To reduce threshold current, many approaches have been reported for edge-emitting lasers and surface-emitting lasers. Recently, with the growing interest in 2D optical interconnect systems, which lead to a lot of channels, surface-emitting-lasers and related optical functional devices have been extensively studied. To integrate these surface-emitting devices into a 2D array, each device has to achieve high light-output power in low current level. For this purpose, threshold reduction in surface-emitting- laser type optical devices is particularly important. This paper reviews recent activity on low-threshold surface-emitting-laser type optical devices, which includes photon recycling and microcavity, and also describes the record low threshold current of 190 (mu) A under pulsed operation at room temperature in an airpost microcavity laser with the diameter of 5 micrometers .

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