Adjustable surface emission from AlGaAs/GaAs laser diodes based on first-order-grating coupled surface mode emission

Strongly improved surface emitting laser diodes based on surface mode emission are presented. A first-order-grating was utilized for the excitation of the surface modes. This results in an efficient quasi-single-beam surface emission with low divergence and a significant narrowing in the emission spectrum. A variation in the emission wavelength of up to 4 nm is achieved by adjusting the surface waveguide thickness, which demonstrates the wavelength selection mechanism of the SME technique. The decisive advantage of the SME laser diodes in comparison to DFB/DBR laser diodes is their high flexibility in fabrication, which makes them very suitable for wavelength division multiplexing applications.