High power and high beam quality 980 nm bottom-emitting vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser

A high-power and high beam quality 980 nm bottom-emitting vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with optimized p-contact aperture was reported. A numerical simulation of current density in a large aperture bottom-emitting VCSEL with oxidation between the active region and the top p-type mirror was conducted. It is found that the simulated current density profiles of VCSEL are dependent on the oxide aperture diameter and the p-contact diameter. For a fixed oxide aperture diameter, the homogeneous current density of the VCSEL could be realized by optimizing the p-contact diameter. Thus, the edge mode in far-field patterns was suppressed. The far-field divergence angle from a 600 μm diameter VCSEL was suppressed from more than 30° to 15° and no strong sidelobe was observed in far-field pattern when the p-contact diameter decreased from 650 μm to 580 μm. There is a slight rise both in threshold current and optical output power due to the p-contact optimization. The VCSEL device produces the maximum optical output power of 2.01 W with lasing wavelength of 982.6 nm by improving the device packaging method.