Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
We report for the first time a successful application of semi-insulating amorphous GaAs layer for surface passivation of index-guided vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. The amorphous GaAs layers on ion-beam-etched active region and mirror layers provide a significant improvement, more than 20%, in the threshold current density and differential quantum efficiency. The improvement of these performances is attributed to low defect density at the surface of active layers induced by amorphous GaAs.