The Design And Study Of Surface Plasmon Metal Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers

Vertical cavity surface emitting laser(VCSEL) has been widely used in optical interconnection, optical communications, high-speed data transmission and many other applications, due to their advantages of low power dissipation, low threshold, high efficiency, high speed modulation, cost-effective, and etc.. However, when the resonant cavity lateral size of traditional VCSEL shrinks to the light wavelength scale, the traditional VCSEL cannot be integrated with the microelectronic device on the nanometer scale, caused by the limitation of optical diffraction limit. Since 2007, the nano-laser based on the metal surface plasmons began to be widely concerned universally. The metal surface plasmon effect not only can make the resonant cavity breakthrough the wavelengths limitation of light diffraction limit, but also has high integration, strong light isolation, low power consumption, the fast switching speed and other advantages. Therefore, it has been widely used in optical computing, high speed data transmission, information storage, super fast data communication, biomedicine and other potential fields.This dissertation are focused on the miniaturization of VCSEL and propose a metal surface plasmon waveguide VCSEL structure, based on the intensive research of the metal-medium surface plasma wave, metal waveguide field distribution and pattern limits. On the experimental aspect, we fabricated the surface plasmon waveguide VCSEL and did the photoluminescence(PL) test. In addition, in order to achieve high optical output power of the VCSEL, we integrate multiple VCSEL elements into two-dimensional arrays of a single chip. After fabricated the 2×2 and 4×4 VCSEL arrays, we analysis and calculate the power conversion efficiency theoretically, by establishing the power conversion efficiency empirical model.The researches can be summarized as follows:Firstly, the field distribution and the effective refractive index of three and five layer metal clad planar waveguide structure are calculated, based on the working principle of VCSEL, the metal/dielectric surface plasma wave characteristics and dispersion model. A new VCSEL structure based on the metal surface plasmon effect is proposed. According to the calculation, the stronger mode restriction is found, and the transverse size can be further reduced.Then, the process of metal surface plasmon waveguide VCSEL is presented and the key fabrication technology as etching, ICP and VCSEL micropillar transfer are careful researched. The metal surface plasmon waveguide VCSEL micropillar is prepared. The PL testing system is using to test the epitaxial wafer’s surface, quantum well structure, and VCSEL micropillar. The expirmental results and the theoretical analysis are consistent.Finally, the power conversion efficiency of VCSEL array with different oxide aperture are analyzed and calculated in theory. The maximum power conversion efficiency increased rapidly with the oxide-aperture at the beginning and then decreased slowly, and the maximum value of 27.91% at the oxide-aperture of 18.6-μm was achieved by simulation. For the aperture size range from 15μm to 25μm, the maximum power conversion efficiency(MPCE) could reach to 99% of the maximum value. The measured maximum MPCE was 28.6% and 27.6% with the aperture size of 16-μm oxide-aperture for 2×2 and 4×4 VCSEL arrays, respectively, which closed to the calculated maximum value. The experimental data were well matched the simulation results.