Threshold currents of nitride vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with various active regions

Abstract

A detailed threshold analysis of room-temperature pulsed operation of GaN/AlGaN/AlN vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) is carried out. The model takes advantage of the latest results concerning gain in active regions, material absorption in the cladding layers, as well as cavity diffraction and scattering losses. The simulation showed that although VCSELs with single (S) or multiple (M) quantum-well (QW) active regions exhibit lower threshold currents, they are much more sensitive to any increase in optical losses than their bulk counterparts. In particular, decreasing the active region radius of gain-guided QW VCSELs below 5 μm (which increases diffraction losses) or increasing dislocation densities (which, in turn, raises scattering losses) gives an enormous rise to their threshold currents. Therefore small-size GaN VCSELs should have an index-guided structure. In the case of MQW VCSELs, the optimal number of quantum wells strongly depends on the reflectivities of resonator mirrors. According to our study, MQW GaN lasers usually require noticeably lower threshold currents compared to SQW lasers. The optimal number of QW active layers is lower in laser structures exhibiting lower optical losses. Although the best result occurred for an active region thickness of 4 nm, threshold currents for the various sizes differ insignificantly.