Design for Reliability and Common Failure Mechanisms in Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers

ABSTRACTVertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers are making up a large and growing share of the world’s production of semiconductor lasers. But the 850 nm GaAs quantum well VCSELs that make up most of present product are highly vulnerable to dislocation networks. In this paper, we discuss how materials selection affects the reliability of semiconductor lasers generally. We then describe the most common failure mechanisms observed in VCSELs, and what precautions are used to prevent them. We finish with a brief discussion of reliability testing and failure analysis.