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This study obtained highly uniform and efficient GaN-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with curved mirrors from a single wafer. The average threshold current (I th) and the optical output power (P max) of 14 chips measured up to 7.0 mA were 0.64 mA and 4.5 mW, respectively. The standard deviations of I th and P max were 6.7% and 5.1%, respectively. Additionally, the best chip showed maximum values of wall plug efficiency and output power of 13.4% and 7.6 mW, respectively, at 5.2 mA and 12.8 mA operating currents.

A single cavity filtering mirror with a highly varying reflectivity spectrum was used to demonstrate a single longitudinal mode operation for a VCSEL with a ∼25 μm cavity length. The 443.5 nm lasing peak had an SMSR of 42 dB at 9 mA, 70 kA cm−2. Increasing the number of DBR pairs between the VCSEL and filtering mirror cavity reduced the simulated optical standing wave in the mirror cavity by 57% and experimentally gave a 42% increase in the slope efficiency to achieve 2.56 mW at 7 mA from a device with a 4 μm aperture with a single longitudinal mode.

We demonstrate a room-temperature continuous-wave operation of green vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with a 20 μm long cavity possessing a dielectric curved mirror formed over a {20−21} semi-polar gallium nitride substrate. The emission wavelength and the threshold current were 515 nm and 1.8 mA, respectively. We also confirmed that white light is generated by overlaying three prime colors of light, i.e. red, blue and green, emitted only from VCSEL.

We report single transverse mode operation of a blue GaN-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (GaN-VCSEL) with a monolithically incorporated curved mirror. For a device with a 4 μm current aperture diameter and a curved mirror with a radius of curvature (ROC) of 51 μm, single transverse mode operation was confirmed up to an output power of 3.2 mW under continuous wave operation at 20 °C. For a device with a smaller ROC of 31 μm, multi transverse mode operation was confirmed, indicating that the transverse mode can be controlled by the cavity design of such GaN-VCSELs.

The continuous wave operation of a gallium-nitride-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (GaN-based VCSEL) that uses boron ion implantation for lateral current confinement and a curved mirror for lateral optical confinement was investigated. The threshold current was 0.25 mA (J th = 3.5 kA cm−2) for a 3 μm diameter current aperture at room temperature and the lasing wavelength was 445.3 nm. This is the lowest threshold current recorded for a GaN-based VCSEL. This result is considered to be a milestone for the further miniaturization of GaN-based VCSELs by the implementation of lateral optical confinement due to the incorporation of a curved mirror.

We have generated picosecond optical pulses with a peak power greater than 300 W at 1 GHz repetition at a blue-violet wavelength using a GaInN-based master oscillator power amplifier. The optical pulses were generated by a mode-locked laser diode incorporating the flared waveguide structure for the increased active region volume to obtain higher output power. The pulses were effectively amplified by the semiconductor optical amplifier with reduced optical confinement factor to high peak power.