Energy-Efficient Oxide-Confined 850-nm VCSELs for Long-Distance Multimode Fiber Optical Interconnects

Highly energy-efficient oxide-confined 850-nm singlemode vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for optical interconnects are presented. Error-free (defined as a bit error ratio-12) data transmission at 17 and 25 Gb/s across 100 m of multimode optical fiber is achieved with a low dissipated heat energy of only 69 and 99 fJ/bit, respectively. At 17 and 25 Gb/s, the transmission distance is increased to 1000 and 600 m, respectively. To date, our VCSELs are the most energy-efficient directly modulated lasers for data transmission across distances up to 1 km of multimode optical fiber.