Room-temperature CW operation of a nitride-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser using thick GaInN quantum wells

We demonstrated a room-temperature (RT) continuous-wave (CW) operation of a GaN-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) using a thick GaInN quantum well (QW) active region and an AlInN/GaN distributed Bragg reflector. We first investigated the following two characteristics of a 6 nm GaInN 5 QWs active region in light-emitting diode (LED) structures. The light output power at a high current density (∼10 kA/cm2) from the 6 nm GaInN 5 QWs was the same or even higher than that from standard 3 nm 5 QWs. In addition, we found that hole injection into the farthest QW from a p-layer was sufficient. We then demonstrated a GaN-based VCSEL with the 6 nm 5 QWs, resulting in the optical confinement factor of 3.5%. The threshold current density under CW operation at RT was 7.5 kA/cm2 with a narrow (0.4 nm) emission spectrum of 413.5 nm peak wavelength.