A laser assembly includes a vertical cavity surface emitting laser and a resonant cavity extension. The resonant cavity extension is defined by two separate portions. A first portion may be formed from gallium arsenide and can define a microlens. A silicon dioxide layer can be disposed over the first portion and may be polished to a flat, planar surface. Reflective layers may interpose the first portion and second portion of the resonant cavity extension, and a reflective layer may be disposed over the planar surface. As a result of this construction, an extended cavity vertical surface emitting laser can be defined that is resistant to mode hopping and exhibits improved coherence length, beam divergence (high numerical aperture), and beam quality.

A method of making a microlens for a VCSEL device includes forming a first lens layer over a second reflector layer. The first lens layer has a first average concentration of a first element. A first additional reflector layer is formed over the first lens layer. A second lens layer is formed over the first additional reflector layer. The second lens layer has a second average concentration of the first element greater than the first average concentration. A second additional reflector layer is formed over the second lens layer. An oxidation process is performed to oxidize peripheral portions of the first and second lens layers to form oxidized peripheral portions of the first and second lens layer. The oxidized peripheral portions of the second lens layer are wider than the oxidized peripheral portions of the first lens layer.

VCSEL-based flood illuminators are fabricated to be compact and surface-mounted devices. A substrate is constructed as a panel array having top and bottom electrodes. Individual ones of the VCSEL dies are mounted in electrical communication with pairs of the top electrodes. The VCSEL dies are encased in an encasement disposed on the top surface of the substrate, and a diffuser structure is nano-imprinted adjacent each of the VCSEL dies. The encasement can use a potting resin and a polymer layer. The potting resin encases the VCSEL dies. The polymer layer is softer and is disposed on the potting resin. Nanoimprint lithography forms the diffuser structures in the polymer layer. The panel array is then singulated to form the individual VCSEL-based flood illuminators.

Disclosed herein are single element dot pattern projectors with a meta-optics. The projectors include a laser light source and a metasurface chip integrated onto the laser light source. The metasurface chip includes metasurface elements spaced apart from the laser light source by a distance equal to the collimating function focal length of the metasurface chip. the laser light source produces light which is diffracted through the metasurface elements to produce a dot pattern. Projectors enabled by meta-optics lead to unique methods of integrating the meta-optic and unique functionality that can be added to the dot pattern.