High-power vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser with an extra Au layer

We report the performance of a high-power vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with an extra Au layer. By using the extra Au layer, the far-field divergence angle from a 600-μm diameter VCSEL device is suppressed from 30/spl deg/ to 15/spl deg/, and no strong sidelobe is observed in far-field pattern. There is a slight drop in optical output power due to the introduction of the extra Au layer. By improving the device packaging method, the VCSEL device produces the maximum continuous-wave optical output power of 1.95 W with lasing wavelength of 981.5 nm. The aging test is carried out under constant current mode at 60/spl deg/C, and the preliminary result shows that the total degradation of output power is less than 10% after 800 h.