Skip to content

Product

Boulder · New Mexico · United Kingdom

Products  /  VCSEL

VCSEL

Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, characterized and qualified in-house. This is the one area where we publish performance results and where product is available today.

Wavelength

Wavelength, held against the line it targets

Measured wavelength of a Mesa Quantum 791 nm VCSEL versus temperature, referenced against the rubidium D1 line Wavelength rises from 791.035 nanometres at 24.07 degrees Celsius to 791.315 nanometres at 30 degrees Celsius, measured on a characterized device. The rubidium D1 transition, at 794.98 nanometres, is marked as the target these devices are engineered to reach. The vertical axis is broken between the two so the measured slope stays readable at its own scale. Rb D1 · 794.98 nm — target line axis break 791.0 791.5 20 24 28 32 24.07°C · 791.035 nm 30°C · 791.315 nm Wavelength (nm) Temperature (°C)
Measured wavelength of a characterized 791 nm VCSEL as it warms from 24.07°C to 30°C, plotted against the rubidium D1 transition at 794.98 nm — the line these devices are engineered to reach. Drawn from our own device data, as text and geometry rather than as a picture of a chart.

Characterized samples are built on a mesa 25 µm across with a 3 µm aperture, centered on an etalon wavelength of 791.5 nm, and tested at 25°C and 80°C under drive currents of 0.8, 1.5 and 2.2 mA. The trace above comes off that same bench: real LIV and wavelength data, not a datasheet figure.

That target is not arbitrary. Rubidium's D1 transition sits at 794.98 nm, and it is what our atomic sensors need to interrogate. A separate line of high-power multijunction VCSELs, at 905 nm and 940 nm, targets automotive sensing instead — a different wavelength for a different physics.

Characterization

Characterized and qualified in-house

An automated test and scan setup takes VCSEL characterization from a bench process to a repeatable one. Devices are probed at wafer level, so a result is attached to a die rather than to a package, and the same measurement can be run across a whole wafer without a person moving a probe by hand.

That matters more than it sounds. A quantum sensor is only as reproducible as the light source inside it, and a light source is only as reproducible as the test that qualified it.

Probe needles contacting a laser die under a microscope, with the emitted spot visible on the wafer surface
Plate 01 · Die under probeWafer-level probing on the automated test setup. The bright spot is the laser output, measured on the die before it is packaged.

Supply

Working with us

Performance results, qualification data and what is available are shared directly. Tell us the wavelength and the environment the part has to survive, and we will tell you what we can do.

Get in touch