Comprehensive analysis of electrically-pumped GaSb-based VCSELs

This paper discusses several performance-related aspects of electrically-pumped GaSb-based buried tunnel junction VCSELs with an emission wavelength of 2.6 mu m based on theoretical and experimental results. These results allow a deeper insight into the internal device physics, such as radial diffusion of carriers, maximum continuous-wave operating temperature, diffraction loss, internal temperature, gain and loss parameters, internal quantum efficiency of the active region etc. These parameters can be taken into account while designing mid-infrared lasers which leads to an improved device performance. A simple thermal model of the devices based on the two-dimensional (2-D) finite element method using the material data from the literature is also presented. In addition, an application-based result utilizing these lasers for the measurement of absolute water vapor concentration by wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) method are also described, hinting that devices are well-suited for the targeted sensing applications. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America