A surface-emitting laser includes a first reflector layer, an active layer provided on the first reflector layer, and a second reflector layer provided on the active layer. The second reflector layer includes a corner reflector that tapers in a direction opposite to the first reflector layer, and the corner reflector has a plan shape of a circle or a polygon with an even number of vertexes.

A semiconductor vertical resonant cavity light source includes an upper and lower mirror that define a vertical resonant cavity. An active region is within the cavity for light generation between the upper and lower mirror. At least one cavity spacer region is between the active region and the upper mirror or lower mirror. The cavity includes an inner mode confinement region and an outer current blocking region. An index guide in the inner mode confinement region is between the cavity spacer region and the upper or lower mirror. The index guide and outer current blocking region each include a lower and upper epitaxial material layer thereon with an epitaxial interface region in between. At least a top surface of the lower material layer includes aluminum in the interface region throughout a full area of an active part of the vertical light source.

In some implementations, a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) includes a substrate layer and epitaxial layers on the substrate layer. The epitaxial layers may include an active layer, a first mirror, a second mirror, and one or more oxidation layers. The active layer may be between the first mirror and the second mirror, and the one or more oxidation layers may be proximate to the active layer. The one or more oxidation layers may be configured to control beam divergence of a laser beam emitted by the VCSEL based on at least one of: a quantity of the one or more oxidation layers, a shape of the one or more oxidation layers, a thickness of the one or more oxidation layers, or a proximity of the one or more oxidation layers to the active layer.

A VCSEL includes an active region between a top distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and a bottom DBR each having alternating GaAs and AlGaAs layers. The active region includes quantum wells (QW) confined between top and bottom GaAs-containing current-spreading layers (CSL), an aperture layer having an optical aperture and a tunnel junction layer above the QW. A GaAs intermediate layer configured to have an open top air gap is disposed over a boundary layer of the active region and the top DBR. The air gap is made wider than the optical aperture and has a height equal to one quarter of VCSEL's emission wavelength in air. The top DBR is attached to the intermediate layer by applying wafer bonding techniques. VCSEL output, the air gap, and the optical aperture are aligned on the same optical axis. The bottom DBR is epitaxially grown on a silicon or a GaAs substrate.

Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and methods for making such are provided. The VCSELs include stepped upper reflectors having respective differently-sized apertures. This allows the lower portion of the reflector to have formed therein a wider-diameter aperture to allow for increased current injection. The upper portion of the reflector has formed therein a narrower-diameter, mode-selecting aperture to allow higher-order modes to be reduced, leading to single-mode operation. The VCSELs are thus capable of higher-power emission in a single mode, allowing for longer-distance signaling over optical fiber, despite modal dispersion within the fiber and/or at the coupling between the VCSEL and the fiber. The two differently-sized apertures can be formed via respective lateral oxidation processes following etch-down to form the respective steps of the upper reflector. Differences in composition across the upper reflector results in temperature-dependence of the oxidation process, allowing the apertures to be formed with different sizes.

A VCSEL can include: an active region configured to emit light; a blocking region over or under the active region, the blocking region defining a plurality of channels therein; a plurality of conductive channel cores in the plurality of channels of the blocking region, wherein the plurality of conductive channel cores and blocking region form an isolation region; a top electrical contact; and a bottom electrical contact electrically coupled with the top electrical contact through the active region and plurality of conductive channel cores. At least one conductive channel core is a light emitter, and others can be spare light emitters, photodiodes, modulators, and combinations thereof. A waveguide can optically couple two or more of the conductive channel cores. In some aspects, the plurality of conductive channel cores are optically coupled to form a common light emitter that emits light (e.g., single mode) from the plurality of conductive channel cores.

A surface-emitting semiconductor laser includes a first emission region that outputs first light, and a second emission region that is provided separately from the first emission region, includes a phase shift section, and outputs second light. A far field pattern of the first light and a far field pattern of the second light are different from each other.

An optoelectronic device includes a semiconductor substrate and an array of optoelectronic cells, formed on the semiconductor substrate. The cells include first epitaxial layers defining a lower distributed Bragg-reflector (DBR) stack; second epitaxial layers formed over the lower DBR stack, defining a quantum well structure; third epitaxial layers, formed over the quantum well structure, defining an upper DBR stack; and electrodes formed over the upper DBR stack, which are configurable to inject an excitation current into the quantum well structure of each optoelectronic cell. A first set of the optoelectronic cells are configured to emit laser radiation in response to the excitation current. In a second set of the optoelectronic cells, interleaved with the first set, at least one element of the optoelectronic cells, selected from among the epitaxial layers and the electrodes, is configured so that the optoelectronic cells in the second set do not emit the laser radiation.

Provided is a high-power vertical cavity surface emitting laser diode (VCSEL), including a first epitaxial region, an active region and a second epitaxial region. One of the first epitaxial region and the second epitaxial region is an N-type epitaxial region, and the other of the first epitaxial region and the second epitaxial region includes a PN junction. The PN junction includes a P-type epitaxial layer, a tunnel junction and an N-type epitaxial layer. The tunnel junction is located between the P-type epitaxial layer and the N-type epitaxial layer, and the P-type epitaxial layer of the PN junction is closest to the active region.

In one example, a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) may include an active region to produce light at a wavelength, an emission surface to emit the light at the wavelength, a first oxide region spaced apart from the active region by a distance of at least a half-wavelength of the wavelength, a first oxide aperture in the first oxide region, a second oxide region between the first oxide region and the second oxide region, and a second oxide aperture in the second oxide region. The emitted light may have a divergence angle that is based on the respective positions and thicknesses of the first oxide region and the second oxide region.