Arrays of 850 nm photodiodes and vertical cavity surface emitting lasers for 25 to 40 Gbit/s optical interconnects

Abstract

AbstractWe report the design and characterization of arrays of compact, energy efficient, multi‐ and single‐mode GaAs‐based 850 nm vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) and complementary p‐i‐n photodiodes (PDs) for 25 to 40 Gb/s optical interconnection applications in computing and data communications. Using foundry service epitaxial growth and processing we obtain over 50k operational devices from each 76.2 mm‐diameter wafer. Using randomly selected on‐wafer‐probed, individually‐probed, and packaged VCSEL and PD dice for single‐channel link tests we consistently achieve record error‐free operation (defined as a bit error ratio (BER) of less than 1x10‐12) at 25 Gbit/s over up to 500 m of OM3 multimode optical fiber. We use our high speed VCSELs to characterize our high speed PDs and vice versa, and achieve open optical eye diagrams at up to 40 Gbit/s (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)