1310 nm-band wafer-fused VCSELs demonstrate record low 10 Gbps modulation current of 6 mA at temperatures from RT to 70 o C. Reliability studies demonstrate the suitability of this technology in commercial photonic systems. OCIS codes: (060.0060) Fiber optics and optical communication.
IntroductionAmong different approaches of long-wavelength vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) fabrication, wafer fusion represents a well-established technique for producing state of the art 10 Gbps devices in the 1310nm wavelength band 1 . Compared with un-cooled 1310 nm distributed-feedback (DFB) lasers for transmission at 10 Gbps, VCSELs offer a considerable reduction of bias current in the full operating temperature range. This feature becomes especially important when building wavelength-multiplexed transmitter modules like, for example, 4x10 Gbps coarse-wavelehgnth division-multiplexing (CWDM) modules according to the recent 40 GbE IEEE 802.3ba standard 2 . In this paper we present state of the art results on wafer-fused 1310 nm VCSELs emitting in the CWDM grid at 1271, 1291, 1311 and 1331 nm with low operation currents below 7 mA. We show that these devices meet industrial reliability requirements for broad deployment in optical communication networks.