Nano electro-mechanical optoelectronic tunable VCSEL

We report a novel electrostatic actuated nano-electromechanical optoelectronic (NEMO) tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) centered at 850 nm. By integrating a movable, single-layer (230 nm), high-index-contrast subwavelength grating (HCG) as the VCSEL top mirror, single mode emission (SMSR >40 dB) and continuous wavelength tuning (~2.5 nm) was obtained at room temperature under CW operation. The small footprint of HCG enables the scaling down of each of the cantilever dimensions by a factor of 10, leading to 1000 times reduction in mass, which potentially increases the mechanical resonant frequency and tuning speed.