We demonstrate an athermal and electrostatically-tunable 850 nm-band MEMS VCSEL for the first time. The thermal wavelength drift is compensated by the thermal actuation of a cantilever-suspended mirror with a bimorph effect. At the same time, the resonant wavelength can be continuously tuned by electro-static force as a voltage is applied in the cantilever structure. A continuous wavelength tuning of 10 nm is obtained with a low thermal wavelength drift, which is 10 times smaller than that of conventional VCSELs. Our athermal and tunable VCSELs enable us to reduce the channel spacing in course wavelength division multiplexing optical interconnects even under uncooled operations.
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