81 fJ/bit energy-to-data ratio of 850 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers for optical interconnects

Abstract

Extremely energy-efficient oxide-confined high-speed 850 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers for optical interconnects are presented. Error-free performance at 17 and 25 Gb/s via a 100 m multimode fiber link is demonstrated at record high dissipation-power-efficiencies of up to 69 fJ/bit $\left(<0.1\text{mW}/\text{Gb}\text{ps}\right)$ and 99 fJ/bit, respectively. These are the most power efficient high-speed directly modulated light sources reported to date. The total energy-to-data ratio is 83 fJ/bit at $25°\text{C}$ and reduces to 81 fJ/bit at $55°\text{C}$ . These results were obtained without adjustment of driving conditions. A high $D$ -factor of $12.0\text{GHz}/{\left(\text{mA}\right)}^{0.5}$ and a $K$ -factor of 0.41 ns are measured.