Damage from proton irradiation of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Damage resulting from irradiating oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers became significant (threshold shift /spl ap/20%, peak power degradation /spl ap/20%) at fluence levels approaching 1/spl times/10/sup 13/ protons/cm/sup 2/. The threshold current shifted to higher values, and the peak light output power decreased. Forward-current annealing led to partial recovery of the performance of two of the three lasers for which annealing was attempted. Recent results on proton-implanted devices are summarized in a table.