Design of Photonic Crystal Membrane-Reflector-Based VCSELs

We present here the cavity design of distributed-Bragg-reflector-free ultracompact Fano-resonance photonic crystal membrane-reflector vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers on silicon, which consists of a III-V quantum-well active region sandwiched in between two single-layer Si membrane reflectors (MRs). The Si reflectors are designed to have peak reflection band around 1550 nm, with over 300-nm reflection band. The complete laser cavity resonance was determined, with considerations of unique phase and field distribution characteristics associated with these single-layer MRs. The confinement factor of the lasing mode is optimized around 6%, which enables low threshold lasing.