A two-chip concept of micro-electro-mechanically tunable long wavelength VCSELS

Widely tunable, long wavelength lasers are very attractive devices for telecom applications. In wavelength division multiplex (WDM) systems tunable lasers could generate the required wavelengths instead of having many different types of non-tunable lasers. Additionally, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) present advantages regarding fiber coupling, single mode property, threshold, and wafer-scale manufacturing. Several monolithic concepts have been published to date. Here, we present a two-chip concept of a tunable VCSEL: the first chip consists of the active, amplifying region on top of a fixed bottom mirror, a so called "half-VCSEL" and the second chip is supporting a movable mirror membrane. Both mirrors are distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs).