Surface Emitting Lasers for Integration,

A new field of optoelectronics including large capacity parallel lightwave communications, multi-access optical disks, optical computing, optical interconnects and so on, is accelerating the importance of surface emitting SE lasers. The research activity is now forwarded to monolithic integration of SE laser based optical circuits by taking the advantage of its small cavity dimension. The importance of 1.3 or 1.55 micrometer devices is currently increasing, since parallel lightwave systems and optical interconnects are actually considered. However, the GaInAsPInP system has some substantial difficulties for making SE lasers due to the Auger recombination, intra-valence band absorption, the index difference between GaInAsP and InP is relatively small, and so on. Pulsed operation has been obtained at near room temperature, and room temperature. A polyimide buried structure device is fabricated by much simpler processes and pulsed operation at 66 deg C has been obtained. But, it is still difficult to operate CW at room temperature in this system.