Prof. Dr.-Ing. Markus-Christian Amann
Technische Universität München
Walter Schottky Institut

Prof. Dr. Constance Chang-Hasnain
University of California, Berkeley
EECS - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The chairs of Prof. M.-C. Amann at the Walter Schottky Institute, TUM and Prof. Chang-Hasnain at the University of California, Berkeley established a cooperation on fabrication and characterization of novel long-wavelength laser diodes (VCSEL) for high-speed optical data transmission. Introducing a new fabrication process, plastics-passivated lasers with low parasitics and optimized design for high-speed experiments shall be developed and fabricated in Munich. These devices will be characterized under Injection-Locking in Berkeley. It is expected to arcieve record high frequency responses (S21) of the injection locked VCSELs in excess of 50 GHz. Furthermore, we will determine the dynamics, internal and external parasitics of the non-locked laser diodes as well, in order to develop a new and superior high-speed design.

Final report:

Thanks to the BaCaTeC funding of the project on high-speed VCSELs for injection locking experiments a very fruitful cooperation could be established. Together, novel high-speed devices could be developed and characterized. These devices showed record-high modulation bandwidth of 11 GHz free-running respectively 66 GHz under injection locking conditions. These results were published in journal papers and presented on several international conferences with high impact.

• X. Zhao, D. Parekh, E. Lau, H.-K. Sung, M. C. Wu, W. Hofmann, M.-C. Amann, and C. J. Chang-Hasnain: "Novel cascaded injection-locked 1.55-µm VCSELs with 66 GHz modulation bandwidth", Optics Express, 15, pp. 14810-14816, 2007
• E. Wong, X. Zhao, C. J. Chang-Hasnain, W. Hofmann, and Markus C. Amann: "Rayleigh backscattering and extinction ratio study of optically injection-locked 1.55 µm VCSELs", Electron. Lett., 43, 3, pp. 182-183, 2007
• E. Wong, X. Zhao, C. J. Chang-Hasnain, W. Hofmann, and M.-C. Amann: " Optically Injection-Locked 1.55-µm VCSELs as Upstream Transmitters in WDM-PONs", IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 18, pp. 2371-2373, 2006
• W. Hofmann and M. C. Amann: "BCB-passivated 1.55 µm VCSELs for High Speed Applications", Nano-Optoelectronic Workshop and BaCaTeC Summer School in Advances of Photonics, Best Poster Award, Berkeley, USA, 2006
• W. Hofmann, N. H. Zhu, M. Ortsiefer, G. Böhm, Y. Liu and M. C. Amann: "High speed (> 11 GHz) modulation of BCB-passivated 1.55 µm InGaAlAs-InP VCSELs", Electron. Lett., 42, pp. 976-978, 2006