Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers: Design, Fabrication, Characterization, and Applications (Cambridge Studies in Modern Optics) [Paperback]

Carl W. Wilmsen (Editor), Henryk Temkin (Editor), Larry A. Coldren (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521006295 | ISBN-13: 978-0521006293 | Publication Date: November 12, 2001

Written by those at the forefront of VCSEL research and development, provides a clear insight into the physics of VCSELs, as well as describing details of their fabrication and the massive range of their application. The chapters cover VCSEL design, emission from microcavities, growth, fabrication, and characterization, long and short-wavelength VCSELs, optical data links, and free space optical processing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There are many things I admire about this book...Overall the book is very well produced with many excellent illustrations and very few typographical errors...it is extremely valuable to have this collection of up-to-date summaries of the progress in this rapidly developing field. It will be essential reading for anyone engaged in diode laster R&D." Contemporary Physics

"This book provides a clear insight into the Physics of VCSELs and describes details of their fabrication and applications. All of the book's contributors are at the forefront of VCSEL research and developments. Together they provide complete and coherent coverage of the current state of the art....This book will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in electrical engineering, applied physics, and material science. It will also be an excellent reference volume for practising engineers in the photonics industry." Optik: International Journal for Light and Electron Optics.

Book Description

One of the key advances in photonic technology in recent years is the development of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs. These devices have a huge range of potential applications. This book provides a clear insight into the physics of VCSELs, as well as describing details of their fabrication and applications. All the book's contributors are at the forefront of VCSEL research and development. Together they provide complete and coherent coverage of the current state-of-the-art. The opening chapters cover VCSEL design, emission from microcavities, growth, fabrication, and characterization. These are followed by chapters on long and short-wavelength VCSELs, optical data links, and free space optical processing.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 474 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (November 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521006295
• ISBN-13: 978-0521006293
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,712,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly good!, June 30, 2003

By 

Isaac Leung (Vancouver, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers: Design, Fabrication, Characterization, and Applications (Cambridge Studies in Modern Optics) (Paperback)

This book is a compilation of chapters written by many authors. I usually hate that, as it typically means some re-prints of some research papers they have written. Somehow, they've managed to avoid this pitfall to provide, believe it or not, a technical book that I actually _enjoy_ reading (the only other one that comes to mind is "In Search of Clusters").

The book is composed of twelve chapters. The first chapter is a brief introduction to VCSELs. The following two chapters are probably the most math-heavy portions of the text, and go into some detail regarding the physics of VCSELs. Chapters 3 to 8 cover mostly practical design and fabrication issues of various types of VCSELs and the remaining chapters go into some detail about applications.

Be aware that this is an introductory book on VCSELs, _not_ semiconductor lasers. One really needs to have at least a basic understanding of lasers and semiconductor devices before jumping in. However, if you have even a basic (undergrad) understanding of this, the rest is nice reading. The first chapter is a short introduction to VCSELs and covers some major structures such as: etched mesa, proton implanted, dielectric apertured, and buried heterostructures. Also included are topics about long- and short-wavelength lasers, fabrication techniques and applications and VCSEL arrays

There are also discussions on various fabrication and performance issues with VCSEL's, such as polarization instabilities. I don't think it went into enough detail regarding standard performance metrics and methods of characterizing these metrics. I think this is an important issue for both production or research which could've filled an entire chapter.

The last few chapters are basically all about applications of VCSELs and practical problems. If you ever wanted to know how to make a reliable optical connection, the various standards and methods are described. This is more "general interest" stuff and can probably be skipped, but it's a good read anyways. It will definitely be worthwhile reading for engineers who are looking for ideas.

It's a textbook, so I noticed some things aren't up to date, but to be fair, no textbook can be fully up to date, especially one that initially went to print in 1999.

Overall, I think this is a good introductory book (a real one, not some graduate reference text posing as an introduction!), written by various experts in both academia and industry. It's relatively inexpensive, so if you're getting in the field, I'd recommend putting this on your bookshelf.