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Funding boosts high-quality VCSELs

10 Jul 2002

A German start-up wins funding to bring long-wavelength VCSELs to the market.

VertiLas of Germany, a maker of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), has secured venture capitalist funding to commercialize its long wavelength products. Based on a buried-tunnel-junction structure, the company says its VCSELs outperform competitive designs at 1.55 µm.

Having spun-off from the Walter Schottky Institute of the Technical University of Munich at the end of last year, the company has now successfully demonstrated lasing from 1.31 to 1.83 µms. "Our goal is to cover the range from 1.3 to 2 µm," chief executive officer Markus Ortsiefer told Optics.org.

"We have also demonstrated the first 10Gbit/s modulation of a 1.55 µm VCSEL," he said. According to Ortsiefer, the 1.55 µm devices have multimode output powers exceeding 7 mW and single mode powers approaching 1 mW.

The company claims that continuous wave (CW) operation at this important telecoms wavelength was demonstrated up to temperatures of 110 °C with 0.5 mW at 80 °C. "For 1.83 µm VCSELs, CW operation was possible up to 90 °C," says Ortsiefer.

VertiLas plans to use the undisclosed amount of cash to establish production facilities and hopes to deliver increasing numbers of VCSELs throughout 2003. As well as targeting the telecommunications market, the company believes its products will find applications in optical-measurement systems, gas sensing and analysis.

Author
Jacqueline Hewett is news reporter on Optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.

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