Band-gap engineered digital alloy interfaces for lower resistance vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Abstract
We report on a technique of grading the heterobarrier interfaces of a p‐type distributed Bragg reflector mirror to reduce the operating voltages of vertical‐cavity surface‐emitting lasers (VCSELs). We report VCSELs with lower operating voltages (2–3 V) and record continuous‐wave room‐temperature power‐conversion efficiencies (17.3%). We experimentally demonstrate that by using a parabolic grading and modulating the doping correctly, a flat valence band is generated that provides low voltage hole transport. The low resistance mirrors are achieved using low Be doping, digital‐alloy grading and 600 °C growth temperatures.