Honeywell International-VCSEL Optical Products

The growth of gigabit optical networking relies on vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) for implementing parallel optical interfaces. Traditional manufacturing of VCSELs has suffered from high costs and lack of standard packaging. The Stabilaze process provides one- and two-dimensional arrays of VCSELs for parallel optical transmission with aggregate speeds in excess of 40 Gb/s. Honeywell International's VCSEL Optical Products division in Richardson, Texas, developed the process for the parallel optical interconnect market to reduce the complexity of assembly and to ensure increased reliability and enhanced performance of the optical transceiver.

The technology accomplishes laser burn-in at the wafer level, providing fully tested VCSEL arrays in die form. The company says that the burn-in process stabilizes shifts in characteristics such as threshold current, slope efficiency and resistance, which ultimately can affect the performance of the transceiver. Wafer-scale processing meets the tech- nological challenge of simultaneously connecting thousands of devices on a wafer and of sourcing a uniform current of up to thousands of amperes through each wafer -- all at temperatures exceeding 125 °C.

These stabilized VCSEL arrays create packaging possibilities for lower-cost assemblies and standardization.