Demonstration of a III-nitride vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser with a III-nitride tunnel junction intracavity contact

Leonard, J. T.; Young, E. C.; Yonkee, B. P.; Cohen, D. A.; Margalith, T.; DenBaars, S. P.; Speck, J. S.; Nakamura, S.

Type

Article

Authors

Leonard, J. T.

Young, E. C.
Yonkee, B. P.
Cohen, D. A.
Margalith, T.
DenBaars, S. P.
Speck, J. S.
Nakamura, S.

Date

2015

Permanent link to this record

http://hdl.handle.net/10754/672998

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Abstract

We report on a III-nitride vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with a III-nitride tunnel junction (TJ) intracavity contact. The violet nonpolar VCSEL employing the TJ is compared to an equivalent VCSEL with a tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) intracavity contact. The TJ VCSEL shows a threshold current density (J<inf>th</inf>) of ∼3.5 kA/cm<sup>2</sup>, compared to the ITO VCSEL J<inf>th</inf> of 8 kA/cm<sup>2</sup>. The differential efficiency of the TJ VCSEL is also observed to be significantly higher than that of the ITO VCSEL, reaching a peak power of ∼550 μW, compared to ∼80 μW for the ITO VCSEL. Both VCSELs display filamentary lasing in the current aperture, which we believe to be predominantly a result of local variations in contact resistance, which may induce local variations in refractive index and free carrier absorption. Beyond the analyses of the lasing characteristics, we discuss the molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) regrowth of the TJ, as well as its unexpected performance based on band-diagram simulations. Furthermore, we investigate the intrinsic advantages of using a TJ intracavity contact in a VCSEL using a 1D mode profile analysis to approximate the threshold modal gain and general loss contributions in the TJ and ITO VCSEL.

Citation

Leonard, J. T., Young, E. C., Yonkee, B. P., Cohen, D. A., Margalith, T., DenBaars, S. P., … Nakamura, S. (2015). Demonstration of a III-nitride vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser with a III-nitride tunnel junction intracavity contact. Applied Physics Letters, 107(9), 091105. doi:10.1063/1.4929944

Sponsors

The authors would like to thank Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation for providing high-quality free-standing m-plane GaN substrates. This work was funded in part by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) Technology Innovations Center (TIC) program, and the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center (SSLEEC) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Partial funding for this work came from Professor Boon S. Ooi at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), through his participation in the KACST-TIC program. A portion of this work was done in the UCSB nanofabrication facility, with support from the NSF NNIN network (ECS-03357650), as well as the UCSB Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), which was supported by the NSF MRSEC program (DMR-1121053).