Nanostructures-based 1.55 μm-emitting Vertical-(External)-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers for microwave photonics and coherent communications

The work presented in this dissertation focus on the development of InP-based semiconductor vertical-cavity lasers, based on quantum nanostructures and emitting at the telecom wavelengths (1550-1600 nm). A new technological process for the realization of compact VCSELs is described. This process (named TSHEC) has been employed to realize optically-pumped VCSELs, integrated onto a host Silicon platform, with good performances. The same process has been adapted to develop an electrically-driven version of VCSELs: a preliminary study of the confinement section based on a InGaAs-BTJ is presented, together with the development of a mask set. Thanks to the development of the liquid crystals μ-cell technology (in collaboration with LAAS, IMT Atlantique et C2N), we realized a tunable photodiode at 1.55 μm, and a tunable VCSEL is currently under development. This work also presents the first realization of a 1.6 μm- emitting optically-pumped quantum dashes-based VECSELs, and its characterization in multi-mode and single-frequency regime. Finally, the realization of an experimental setup for the investigation of the coupling between two orthogonal eigenstates of a bi- frequency 1.54 μm-emitting SQW-VECSEL has been conceived and realized. This setup, which allowed the direct quantification of the coupling constant on such a device, in the near future will allow performing the same study on anisotropic structures like quantum dashes or quantum dots, with the objective of studying the inhomogeneous broadening effect observed in these gain regions.