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VCSEL

Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, characterized and qualified in-house. This is the one area where we publish performance results and where product is available today.

A vertical-cavity laser in section: a cavity between two mirror stacks, emitting a beam upward through an oxide aperture at the chip surface.

Readout

Wavelength vs. temperature

The scale below is the wavelength axis itself: the fine dots are the scale, now sized to the band our devices actually occupy rather than a supplier catalogue. Characterized samples — etalon read at 791.5 nm, 25 µm mesa, 3 µm aperture — were swept on a WaveEye wavelength meter from 24.07 °C to 30 °C, moving 791.035 nm to 791.315 nm. The rubidium D1 line those atomic sensors need sits at 794.98 nm, marked as the target the tuning is aimed at.

MEASURED, 24.07–30°C790791792793794795796Wavelength (nm)Rb D1 target — 794.98 nm
VCSEL wavelength vs. temperature, measured in-house on a ThorLabs WaveEye wavelength meter and redrawn as SVG so that every value on it is real text rather than pixels. Same-batch parts were quick-checked for LIV and wavelength at 25 °C and 80 °C under 0.8, 1.5 and 2.2 mA drive, reading 791.5 nm on the bench etalon.

Characterization and test

A laser is only as useful as the record that comes with it. Every die is probed on an automated test and scan setup built in-house, because the equipment to do it at the precision atomic sensing needs was not available to buy. That setup is what turns VCSEL characterization from a bench process into a repeatable one.

The same discipline runs through the rest of the work: parts are qualified before they leave, results are recorded per die rather than per batch, and what we publish about a part is what we measured on it. Detailed performance data is shared directly with customers evaluating a design-in.

A separate high-power multijunction line targets 905 nm and 940 nm for automotive applications, built and qualified on the same in-house test and scan setup.

Related

Metasurface work is developed alongside these devices. See Products for the wider set, or Capabilities for the systems this technology sits inside.

Probe needles contacting a VCSEL die under a microscope, with the laser spot visible on the wafer surface.
A real Mesa Quantum photograph. Probe needles on a die during automated test. The bright spot is the device under test, emitting.
A probe head stepping die to die across a VCSEL wafer, marking each device as it is characterized, in the order the automated scan runs.

What the automated scan does

The probe head steps die to die across the wafer on a fixed pitch and records a result for each one before it moves. That is the difference between a characterization figure that describes a sample and one that describes a population — and it is why a part number here comes with a per-die record rather than a batch average.