VI Systems, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demo photonic crystal VCSEL

VI Systems GmbH and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois used the recent Photonics West Conference to demonstrate an 850-nm singlemode photonic crystal vertical cavity surface emitting laser (PC VCSEL). The device can transmit a 25-Gbps signal over 1 km of multimode fiber.

The PC VCSEL was manufactured via a proprietary VI System’s wafer processed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a defined photolithographic pattern of holes in the top mirror. Operating at a current density of 5.4 kA/cm2, the device supports -3-dB bandwidth of 18 GHz.

The partners reported error-free transmission at 25-Gbps over 1-km of OM4 multimode fiber at a received power of only 70 µW. The demonstration took place at the Department of Solid State Physics at the Technical University of Berlin using a high-speed photoreceiver module from VI Systems.

The singlemode VCSEL extends reach over multimode fiber by eliminating the effects of chromatic dispersion at 850 nm, the partners say.

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