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Vertical External-cavity

Surface-emitting Lasers

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Ask RP Photonics for advice on VECSELs. Note that Dr. Paschotta has developed highpower passively mode-locked VECSELs and has the software RP Coating for
designing VECSEL structures.
Acronym: VECSEL
Definition: surface-emitting semiconductor lasers with an external laser resonator
A VECSEL is a semiconductor laser based on a surface-emitting semiconductor gain
chip and a laser resonator which is completed with one or several external optical
elements. Compared with other types of semiconductor lasers, VECSELs can generate
very high optical powers in diffraction-limited beams, i.e., with high beam quality. They
can thus often compete with some doped-insulator solid-state lasers and gas lasers.
Compared with those, their wavelength versatility can be an important advantage.
Figure 1: Schematic of a VECSEL (not to scale) with a semiconductor gain chip and an
external laser resonator. Arrangements for pumping and cooling are not shown. (See
above)
The semiconductor device (gain chip) may contain only a single semiconductor Bragg
mirror and the active region (gain region) with typically several quantum wells (QWs).
The semiconductor structure typically has a total thickness of only a few micrometers
(not including the semiconductor substrate), and is mounted on some kind of heat sink.
The laser resonator is completed with an external mirror, typically in a distance between
a few millimeters and some tens of centimeters. (For good beam quality, the length of
the resonator should not be much smaller than the Rayleigh length of the intracavity
beam.) The laser mode size in the semiconductor chip is essentially defined by the
external resonator setup.
The external resonator may be folded with additional flat or curved mirrors and may
contain additional optical elements, such as an optical filter for single-frequency
operation and/or wavelength tuning, a nonlinear crystal for intracavity frequency
doubling, or a saturable absorber for passive mode locking [2]. It is also possible to
make a monolithic resonator with a microlens, being contacted with the gain chip on
one side and having an output coupler mirror coating on the other surface [21].
Figure 2: Cavity setup of a passively mode-locked VECSEL. (See above)

Electrical Versus Optical Pumping

In principle, electrical pumping is the preferred approach, since otherwise an additional


pump laser is required. Electrically pumped VECSELs have a gain structure similar to
that of a VCSEL, where a ring electrode around the active area injects carriers into that
region. Unfortunately, this technique limits the usable active area and thus the output
power, since it is difficult to pump large areas uniformly in this way, avoiding a weakly
pumped region at the center of the active area. So far, the powers achievable with such
devices appear to be limited to the order of 1 W [8].
Optical pumping avoids this limitation; it is easy in this way to pump arbitrarily large
active areas uniformly. Furthermore, the design of the gain structure is very much
simplified, since doped regions for carrying the current are not required, nor apertures to
direct the current flow. The pump light is typically taken from a high-brightness broadarea laser diode or from a diode bar. Due to the very short absorption length of the
semiconductor gain structure (at least for spacer pumping; see below), the beam quality
of the pump light is not very important; a poor beam quality only requires working with
a strongly converging pump beam, which requires more space and may make it more
difficult to arrange the intracavity elements. It is possible, however, to achieve tens of
watts of output power [9,32] when pumping with a diode bar.
Note that an external resonator is necessary for achieving diffraction-limited output,
when the mode area is large. Therefore, VCSELs are not suitable for high powers with
perfect beam quality, even with optical pumping.

Cooling Techniques and Power Scalability


Compared with VCSELs, VECSELs can have much larger beam areas (diameters of
hundreds of microns), particularly for optical pumping. This keeps the optical intensity
at a reasonable level, even for high output powers.
Another issue is the extraction of the dissipated heat. When using a gain structure grown
on a wafer with, e.g., 0.5 mm thickness, and not applying special cooling techniques,
the devices become too hot unless the active area and output power are again fairly
limited. This limitation results from the substantial thermal impedance of the
semiconductor structure. There are, however, techniques to achieve much more efficient
cooling, as described in the following.
One approach is to use a specially processed very thin semiconductor structure on an
efficient heat sink. This can be fabricated by first growing the semiconductor layers in
reverse order (upside down) on a normal wafer, then soldering the surface to a metallic
heat sink, and finally removing the substrate by etching (up to an etch stop, which has
also been epitaxially grown). One obtains a semiconductor structure with a thickness of
the order of 510 m and thus a strongly reduced thermal impedance.
Another approach is to attach a transparent heat spreader to the emitting surface. Such
heat spreaders can be made e.g. of diamond, silicon carbide or sapphire. Due to their
good transparency for the laser and pump wavelength, they may not substantially
degrade the laser efficiency.

Both cooling techniques can lead one into a regime where power scaling is possible.
The power scaling procedure for doubling the output power is essentially to apply twice
the pump power to twice the active area. For large areas, the heat flow is dominantly in
the longitudinal direction, and doubling the area also doubles the cooling capability.
This means that device temperatures do not rise significantly for further increased active
areas. However, thermally induced stress effects, which may also affect the beam
quality, do become stronger for higher powers, so that power scaling is not entirely
easy.
As the geometry of a VECSEL gain medium is that of a thin disk, optically pumped
VECSELs are sometimes called semiconductor disk lasers. In fact, they are similar to
solid-state thin-disk lasers, with which they share their concept of power scaling,
despite the different kind of gain medium. It is not clear yet what the power limits for
these types of lasers are.
Considering that such a VECSEL can generate an essentially diffraction-limited beam
while working with a pump source with potentially very poor beam quality (e.g. a highpower diode bar), an optically pumped VECSEL can be considered as an efficient
brightness converter.

Accessible Wavelengths and Details of VECSEL Gain


Structures
A typical VECSEL gain structure contains a Bragg mirror and an active region with
multiple quantum wells (MQW active region), all of which are fabricated with an
epitaxial process (normally either MOCVD or MBE) on a semiconductor wafer. The
wafer material defines the lattice constant and thus restricts the choice of materials to be
used. Typical material combinations are:
On a gallium arsenide (GaAs) wafer, a Bragg mirror with AlAs and GaAs can be
grown, if the photon energy of the laser radiation is below the bandgap of GaAs,
so as to avoid absorption in the Bragg mirror. The active region can then contain
InGaAs (InxGa1xAs) quantum wells, where the indium (In) content lowers the
bandgap energy. Such InGaAs layers are compressively strained, because
InGaAs would naturally have a slightly larger lattice constant. The quantum
wells can be embedded in AlGaAs, and strain compensation (see below) is
possible with additional layers e.g. of GaAs1xPx. Such structures are suitable for
emission wavelengths of e.g. 960 or 1030 nm.
For significantly longer emission wavelengths (e.g. around 1.3 or 1.55 m),
InGaAs can no longer be used, because the strain would be too large with the
required high indium content. In such cases, GaInNAs quantum wells can be
suitable, where the nitrogen content reduces the lattice constant. VECSELs
based on such dilute nitride materials have the potential for a similar
performance to that with InGaAs, although the growth of quaternary materials
tends to be more difficult.
Emission in the 1.5-m region is also possible with InGaAsP quantum wells and
indium phosphide (InP) as the wafer material. However, a good Bragg mirror is
then more difficult to make. The combination InP/InGaAlAs has a low refractive
index contrast and therefore requires a large number of layer pairs, or possibly

combination with a metallic (gold) layer. It is also possible to fuse an InP-based


quantum well gain region to a GaAs/AlAs Bragg mirror on a GaAs wafer, but
the fabrication of such hybrid structures is difficult.
For still longer wavelengths of e.g. 2 m, antimonide materials can be used [22].
The quantum wells may be made from GaInSb (gallium indium antimonide).
Such structures can be grown on GaSb (gallium antimonide) wafers.
For emission around 850 nm, GaAs quantum wells are suitable. Then, however,
GaAs cannot be contained in the Bragg mirror, because the mirror should not be
absorbing. One then has to resort to an AlAs/AlGaAs Bragg mirror, the latter
with an aluminum content high enough to obtain a large enough bandgap. The
refractive index contrast is then reduced, but normally still sufficient.
Still shorter emission wavelengths in the red spectral region, such as 610 or
650 nm, can be realized with GaInP quantum wells between AlGaInP barriers.
The shorter the wavelength, the lower the possible index contrast of the Bragg
mirror, which can cause problems.
The quantum wells are usually placed such that each one is in an anti-node of the
electric field distribution for the lasing wavelength. This configuration is sometimes
called resonant periodic gain, although this wording is somewhat inappropriate, since
the periodic placement of quantum wells has no relation to a resonance (even if the
structure may be resonant in addition). As other wavelengths have a different standingwave period, their field distributions will overlap less perfectly with the quantum wells
(lower confinement factor), so that the effective gain is reduced.
The number of quantum wells used in such a structure can vary. A larger number may
result in a higher gain, but also in a thicker gain structure with a higher sensitivity to
growth errors, strain and temperature effects (see below). Also, some considerable
degree of inhomogeneous gain saturation can occur as a result of both the internal
temperature gradients and different excitation levels of the quantum wells. This can be a
problem e.g. in narrow-linewidth or mode-locked operation.
Temperature changes affect both the wavelength of maximum intrinsic gain of the
quantum wells and the field distribution. As some degree of heating is unavoidable, gain
structures should be designed so that an optimum match of all parameters is achieved at
the expected operating temperature, rather than at room temperature. Designs which are
non-ideal in this respect may exhibit a serious power reduction (roll-over) for too high
pump powers.
Another important issue is the influence on the strain in VECSEL gain structures, which
results from the lattice mismatch particularly between the quantum wells and the other
layers. For example, InGaAs quantum wells in a GaAs-based VECSEL structure are
subject to compressive strain, because their natural lattice constant would be slightly
larger than that of GaAs. By incorporating some additional layers with a smaller lattice
constant and appropriate thickness, strain compensation occurs in the sense that the
overall compressive and tensile strain are balanced. (The compressive strain within the
quantum wells remains, of course, and can even have beneficial effects in terms of
higher optical gain and efficiency.) Even when strain-compensating layers are used, it is
not easy to avoid strain-related defects entirely, which occur e.g. in the form of dark
lines where the photoluminescence is quenched. (Lattice defects have the tendency to
propagate along certain crystal directions.) During laser operation, involving significant

temperature gradients, such defects can accumulate and lead to rapid device
degradation. The development and reliable fabrication of high-power VECSEL gain
structures with long lifetime is certainly a difficult task.
The following section discusses additional details related to optical pumping.
Overall, the design (and of course the growth) of VECSEL gain structures is a
sophisticated issue, where many factors have to be taken into account to reach
satisfactory performance. Gain structures for mode-locked operation (see below)
involve additional design details related to chromatic dispersion, which can strongly
affect the pulse shaping process. A good understanding of all these factors and the use
of flexible design software are essential for finding good designs.

In-well Pumping Versus Spacer Pumping


Due to the small thickness of the quantum wells in the gain region of a VECSEL, pump
absorption is not particularly efficient if it occurs only in the quantum wells. Therefore,
the usual approach is to design the gain structure such that the spacer layers between the
quantum wells also absorb pump radiation. The carriers generated in these layers can be
efficiently transferred to the quantum wells, as these have a smaller bandgap than the
spacer layers. However, efficient carrier transfer requires that the bandgaps of both
materials are sufficiently different, and thus that the pump wavelength is substantially
shorter than the laser wavelength. This increases the quantum defect and thus the
dissipated power.
An alternative is in-well pumping, i.e. directly pumping the quantum wells [13].
Efficient pump absorption may then still be achieved by using a multipass pumping
scheme, much as in a solid-state thin-disk laser. However, this adds to the complexity of
the setup and also introduces more stringent conditions on the optical spectrum of the
pump radiation. It is therefore not clear whether this approach is sufficiently practical
for widespread application.

Intracavity Frequency Doubling


As a VECSEL is a low-gain laser, its intracavity power is far higher than the output
power. This is advantageous for intracavity frequency doubling, i.e. inserting a
nonlinear crystal into the laser resonator. In this way, watt-level continuous-wave
devices can exhibit efficient nonlinear frequency conversion. This allows the
construction of efficient red, green and blue laser sources, with possible applications
e.g. in RGB laser projection displays.

Ultrashort Pulse Generation with Mode Locking


The external cavities of VECSELs also allow for mode-locked operation [2] with pulse
repetition rates of typically a few gigahertz, but in some cases below 1 GHz or far above
10 GHz [15]. Particularly with passive mode locking of optically pumped VECSELs,
utilizing a laser diode as pump source and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror
(SESAM) in the external resonator for mode locking, tremendous progress has been
achieved since the year 2000. This lead to average output powers well exceeding 1 W

[4], i.e., being orders of magnitude higher than achievable with any other mode-locked
semiconductor laser. Typical pulse durations are in the lower picosecond range,
although durations well below 1 ps have also been demonstrated [6,24]. The pulses are
sometimes close to transform limited, but strongly chirped in other cases, depending on
details of chromatic dispersion and other issues.
It has recently been demonstrated that passive mode locking is possible even with a
saturable absorber integrated into the gain structure [17]. Such integrated structures are
difficult to grow and are so far subject to serious performance limitations. However, in
the future they may allow the construction of very compact and potentially cheap modelocked lasers [20].
Note that the details of pulse generation in VECSELs are substantially different from
those of more conventional solid-state bulk lasers or fiber lasers. In particular,
VECSELs exhibit a low saturation fluence and a low upper-state lifetime. This allows
for very high pulse repetition rates without Q-switching instabilities. On the other hand,
it is not possible to obtain high pulse energies, except for synchronous pumping with
another mode-locked laser.

Future Potential
VECSELs appear to have a huge potential for widespread application in various areas,
because they combine several important features:
wavelength versatility
potential for high output power
high beam quality
potentially cheap mass production
The last mentioned advantage results from the fact that VECSEL gain structures can be
fabricated with a wafer technology, where hundreds or thousands of devices are grown
on a single wafer.
These advantages make VECSELs particularly interesting as parts of RGB sources for
digital laser projection displays. The output powers required for consumer products can
be generated with electrically pumped devices, further lowering the cost. Large screen
displays can still use optically pumped lasers.
VECSELs will replace many other solid-state lasers also in other application areas
where special wavelengths (particularly short wavelengths) are required (see e.g. the
article on visible lasers). They are also interesting candidates in cases where ultrashort
pulses are required, provided that one does not need high pulse energies.
Another application of VECSELs is intracavity laser absorption spectroscopy, relying
on VECSEL chips which are optimized for a broad emission bandwidth.

Bibliography

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See also: vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers, surface-emitting semiconductor lasers,


thin-disk lasers, brightness converters
Category: lasers

This encyclopedia is authored by Dr. Rdiger Paschotta, the founder and executive of
RP Photonics Consulting GmbH. Contact this distinguished expert in laser technology,
nonlinear optics and fiber optics, and find out how his technical consulting services (e.g.
product designs, problem solving, independent evaluations, or staff training) could
become very valuable for your business!

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