Addressing the electrical degradation of 845 nm micro-transfer printed VCSILs through TCAD simulations

In this work we present the electrical modeling of novel 845 nm vertical-cavity silicon-integrated lasers (VCSILs) for silicon photonics (SiPh). We tested the reliability of the devices by submitting them to high current stress, corresponding to ≈ 20xI
th
, to observe the degradation as a function of time. During the stress experiment, we monitored the electrical characteristics at regular intervals and we observed two separate degradation phenomena: the series resistance increment and the lowering of the turn-on voltage. Thanks to a Poisson-drift diffusion simulator we simulated the I-V characteristics and the band diagrams to interpret the degradation phenomena. The results of the simulations confirmed that the electrical degradation can be caused by the diffusion of compensation impurities originating from the p-contact layers. The same mechanism was also responsible of the optical degradation of the devices.