Long-Cavity M-Plane GaN-Based Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers with a Topside Monolithic Curved Mirror
Nathan Palmquist, Ryan M. Anderson, Jared A. Kearns, Joonho Back, Emily Trageser, Stephen Gee, Steven P. DenBaars, Shuji Nakamura
Abstract
We report long-cavity (60.5 λ) GaN-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with a topside monolithic GaN concave mirror, a buried tunnel junction current aperture, and a bottomside nanoporous GaN distributed Bragg reflector. Under pulsed operation, a VCSEL with a 9 µm aperture had a threshold current density of 6.6 kA/cm2, a differential efficiency of 0.7%, and a maximum output power of 290 µW for a lasing mode at 411 nm and a divergence angle of 8.4°. Under CW operation, the threshold current density increased to 7.3 kA/cm2, the differential efficiency decreased to 0.4%, and a peak output power of 130 µW was reached at a current density of 23 kA/cm2.