Uniform and high power selectively oxidized 8/spl times/8 VCSEL array

We report the uniform characteristics of an 8/spl times/8 individually addressable high power 850 nm VCSEL array. To achieve 2-dimensional array uniformity, both growth and fabrication uniformity issues must be considered. The VCSEL wafer is grown by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy using an EMCORE reactor designed and calibrated for high growth uniformity. The distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) mirrors are composed of Al/sub 0.16/Ga/sub 0.84/As/Al/sub 0.94/Ga/sub 0.06/As layers with continuous compositional grading at the interfaces. In the 6 DBR periods on each side of the optical cavity the doping profile is decreased to as low as 5/spl times/10/sup 17/ cm/sup -3/ for reduced optical absorption. This design enhances the output power at the expense of relatively higher threshold voltage.