Numerical Analysis on Current and Optical Confinement of III-Nitride Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

Abstract

We report on the numerical analysis of the electrical and optical properties of current-injected III-N based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with three types of current confinement schemes: the conventional planar-Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) type, the AlN-buried type without ITO, and the hybrid type. The proposed hybrid structure, which combines an ITO layer and an intracavity AlN aperture, exhibits not only a uniform current distribution but also an enhanced lateral optical confinement. Thus, the hybrid type design shows a remarkably better performance including lower threshold current and series resistance compared with the planar-ITO type and the AlN-buried type. Furthermore, the multi-transverse mode lasing behavior induced by strong index guiding of the AlN aperture is suppressed to single transverse mode operation by reducing the aperture size. Such design provides a powerful solution for the high performance III-N based VCSELs and is also viable by using current state of the art processing techniques.