VERTICAL-CAVITY surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL s)

Transcription

1 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL Hybrid Integration of VCSEL s to CMOS Integrated Circuits Rui Pu, Chunjie Duan, and Carl W. Wilmsen, Senior Member, IEEE Abstract Three hybrid integration techniques for bonding vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL s) to CMOS integrated circuit chips have been developed and compared in order to determine the optimum method of fabricating VCSEL based smart pixels for optical interconnects and free-space optical processing. Each of the three bonding techniques used different ways of attaching the VCSEL to the integrated circuit and making electrical contacts to the n- and p-mirrors. All three techniques remove the substrate from the VCSEL wafer leaving an array of individual VCSEL s bonded to individual pixels. The and/or arrays of bonded VCSEL s produced electrical and optical characteristics typical of unbonded VCSEL s. Threshold voltages down to 1.5 V and dynamic resistance as low as 30 were measured, indicating good electrical contact was obtained. Optical power as high as 10 mw for a VCSEL with a 20-m aperture and 0.7 mw with a 6-m aperture were observed. The VCSEL s were operated at 200 Mb/s (our equipment limit) with the rise and fall times of the optical output <1 ns. Index Terms Flip-chip bonding, hybrid integration, OEIC, VCSEL s. I. INTRODUCTION VERTICAL-CAVITY surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL s) are an ideal light source for free-space optical processing since they can easily be fabricated into two dimensional arrays of individually addressed lasers which emit a low divergent column of light normal to the array surface. However, VC- SEL s do not perform logic or function as switches and thus must be electrically connected to an electronic processing array that not only performs the desired function but also provides the current drive for the VCSEL s. These processors are called smart pixels. In order to be practical, free space optical processing requires large arrays of smart pixels that can operate at high frequency, have uniform performance across the array and be competitively priced. Reliable foundries are available to fabricate the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits required for the smart pixels and the fabrication of VCSEL s has become an established technology [1]. However, it is a challenging process to integrate a large array of VCSEL s to a CMOS chip since the electrical interconnections between the VCSEL s and the CMOS electronic driver circuit must be short in order to reduce the parasitic capacitance, electrical cross talk and the tangle Manuscript received November 2, 1998; revised March 8, This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant and by Colorado State University under the Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence. The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO USA. Publisher Item Identifier S X(99) of interconnect wires that would be required if a separate VCSEL chip containing a 1000 or more VCSEL s is located some distance from the CMOS chip. Thus, the new frontier for VCSEL s is the development of reliable techniques for merging the VCSEL s with very large, foundry fabricated smart pixel arrays. Developing this enabling technology will open up many new applications for VCSEL-based smart pixels [2] [4]. This paper reports the successful bonding of arrays of individual VCSEL s to CMOS integrated circuits, GaAs MESFET circuits and patterned GaAs substrates using three different bonding techniques. The characteristics of the three bonding techniques are discussed and compared. The CMOS/VCSEL combination is shown to be capable of operating at 500 Mb/s per channel and have low series resistance. Previously, other research groups have reported on the bonding of individual VCSEL s. Maracas et al. [5] placed individual VCSEL s on a silicon chip by attaching the VCSEL to a probe with water-soluble glue. This approach evolved into an applique technique [6] similar to that developed by Jokest and co-workers [7] for photodetectors. This latter technique fully processes the wafer into VCSEL s, temporarily attaches the VCSEL s to another substrate, removes the substrate from the VCSEL wafer and then transfers individual VCSEL s to the electronic chip. Electrical contracts are then made between the VCSEL and the electronic chip. Yeh and Smith [8] and Matsuo et al. [9] have taken the approach of first bonding the VCSEL wafer to the electronic chip, then removing the substrate from the VCSEL wafer and processing the remaining layers into individual VCSEL s. The Yeh and Smith techniques attaches the VCSEL wafer to the substrate with a metal which makes using the VCSEL s with individual CMOS pixels difficult. The Matsuo et al. [9] have demonstrate bonding arrays of VCSEL s to silicon substrates using polyimide. We have previously reported using a coplanar bonding technique [10] to attach 8 8 arrays of individual VCSEL s to foundry fabricated GaAs MESFET chips. In this paper we report using this coplanar process and two other processes to bond 4 4 arrays of individual VCSEL s to CMOS chips and other substrates. II. VCSEL BONDING TECHNIQUES The research present here was motivated by the need to develop one or more bonding techniques that are scalable to 1000 VCSELs/cm. The technique(s) must also result in high performance VCSEL s that bond reliably without disturbing the electronic functions of the CMOS chip. Low parasitic X/99$ IEEE

2 202 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1999 capacitance and low thermal and electrical resistance are also factors that must be considered. In starting this research, we first generalized the bonding techniques into three basic types and then designed, fabricated and tested each of these types. As part of this process, we decided to concentrate on techniques that removed the substrate from the VCSEL wafer since this reduces problems associated with stress induced by multiple bonds connecting two large chips together, especially since the two chips are of different material and have different coefficients of expansion. Removing the substrate also appears to more readily allow the use of shorter wavelength VCSEL s. In addition, we choose to use oxide confined VCSEL s instead of either proton implanted, air post or under etched fabrication techniques, since the oxide confined VCSEL have the highest efficiency and appeared to be more compatible with the other processes required for bonding VCSEL s to CMOS. High efficiency is also important for large, dense arrays since the heat generation of the chip set must be limited. The hybrid integration process includes attaching the VC- SEL s to the electronic pixel chip and making electrical connection between the VCSEL s and the electronic circuits of the pixels. This paper reports the results of the successful bonding of the following three hybrid integration techniques. 1) Coplanar Flip-Chip Bonding: With this technique, both the n- and p-mirror contacts of the VCSEL are bonded to corresponding metal pads located in the electronic pixel using a thermo-compression of Au post into InSn solder. The Au/solder provides both a means of attachment and electrical connection. 2) Top Bottom Contact Bonding: This techniques uses a solder bond to both attach the VCSEL to the electronic chip and make contact to the p-mirror. The -mirror contact is made with a deposited thin film. 3) Top Contact Bonding: This technique attaches the VC- SEL to the electronic chip with epoxy. Deposited thin films are used to make both the n- and p-mirror contacts. All of the results reported here are for either 4 4or 8 8 arrays of VCSEL s bonded on a 250 m pitch. Two 30 m 30 m bonding pads separated by 25 monthe CMOS/substrate were used for all three bonding techniques. The electronic chips were either: 1) 0.5- m CMOS or 1.0- m GaAs MESFET technologies which were fabricated through the MOSIS Foundry Service or 2) specially prepared array patterns on semi-insulating GaAs fabricated in our laboratory. The VCSEL wafers were grown at Sandia National Laboratories for an emission wavelength of 850 nm. The VCSEL epitaxial layers were grown on n-type GaAs wafers in a conventional way. However, since the bonded VCSEL s are back emitting, the light will be emitted through the n-mirror which requires the n-mirror to be less reflecting than the p-mirror. A A AlAs stop etch layer was grown between the n-mirror and the substrate. For the present VCSEL wafers, no intercavity contacting layers were included, although these would reduce the series resistance of two of the bonding techniques. All of the VCSEL and bonding processing was performed in our laboratory except the reactive ion etching, which was done Fig. 1. Illustration of a coplanar bonded VCSEL to an electronic chip showing the basic structural features. Fig. 2. Scanning electron photomicrograph of VCSEL s coplanar bonded to a CMOS chip. either in another laboratory at Colorado State or at Sandia. The VCSEL s were fabricated using the oxide confinement technique with the oxides grown in steam at 430 C. After bonding the VCSEL s to the electronic chip, the substrate was removed from the VCSEL wafer, leaving the -mirror attached to the electronic chip. A. The Coplanar Flip-Chip Bonding Technique This technique takes advantage of the flip-chip bonding process in which all of the bonds of the VCSEL array are simultaneously bonded to the bonding pads of the electronic chip. In order to accomplish this, the VCSEL s is fully processed before bonding and the n and p mirror contacts are formed in such a ways that they are on the same plane, as illustrated in Fig. 1. After the bonding, the VCSEL wafer substrate is removed by selective etching, leaving individual VCSEL s locally bonded to pads in the smart pixel array as shown in the scanning electron photomicrograph of Fig. 2. The oxide confined VCSEL s were fabricated by dry etching the device mesa down to the n-mirror which leaves the wafer surface with 4 5- m steps. While this decreases the resolution of subsequent photolithography, VCSEL processing only requires a few micrometer resolution which is readily obtainable. Furthermore, the coplanar flip chip structure does

3 PU et al.: HYBRID INTEGRATION OF VCSEL S TO CMOS INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 203 (a) Fig. 3. Optical photomicrograph of a array of VCSEL s coplanar bonded to a CMOS chip. not require a metal aperture (this is the smallest feature of the VCSEL), thus the resolution requirement is even less critical. After etching the mesas, wet oxidation is performed. The p- and n-contacts are then deposited and annealed, and Au is electroplated on the n-contact to a height level with the p-contact. The accuracy of the electroplated Au must be controlled within 0.3 m, otherwise the bonding process has a low yield. This electroplating is followed by a second plating of Au posts on both the n- and p-contacts in order to enhance the bonding. Dry etching down to the substrate then forms another mesa surrounding this structure. The bonding pads of foundry fabricated IC s are Al and thus will not bond directly to the electroplated Au on the VCSEL s. Therefore, Ti Au InSn was deposited onto the IC and patterned to leave this metallization only on the Al pads. The flip-chip bonding of the VCSEL s was accomplished by mounting the VCSEL and electronic chip onto separate glass plates with crystal bond, aligning them in a mask aligner using IR and then pressing the two chips together with pressure. If this part of the process is done properly, then this unit can be easily transferred to a hot plate and heated to 180 C for 10 min which melts the InSn contacts and bonds the two chips together. Since the present volume of the InSn is small we believe that alloying of the InSn with Au occurs, and not reflow. Further work on the contact metallurgy is required and increasing the volume of InSn in order to affect reflow may improve the process. After the bonding, epoxy is wicked in between the chips to enhance the robustness of the structure and protect the pixel chip from attack by the subsequent polish and selective etch used to remove the GaAs substrate [11], [12]. The epoxy is then removed with an oxygen plasma leaving free standing VCSEL s bonded to the pixels as illustrated in Fig. 3 which is an optical photomicrograph of a 4 4 array of coplanar bonded VCSEL s to a 0.5- m CMOS chip. Nine of the 16 VCSEL s lased with similar characteristics. We have also bonded 8 8 VCSEL arrays to GaAs MESFET circuits [10] and other types of substrates. The light output versus current ( ) and current versus voltage ( ) characteristics of five (b) Fig. 4. Characteristics for five VCSEL coplanar bonded to the same GaAs Substrate. (a) L I curves. (b) I V curves. VCSEL s bonded to a GaAs substrate are given in Fig. 4. Note that the aperture for this VCSEL is 15 m, which yields a threshold current, is 3.1 ma, a threshold voltage of 2.8 V, a dynamic resistance of 30 and a maximum power out of 4 mw. Smaller apertures yield ma. The VCSEL s bonded to CMOS have been driven at 200 Mb/s with rise and fall times 1 ns, which indicates that the VCSEL/CMOS chip can operate at 500 Mb/s. Thus, these bonded VCSEL s have excellent electrical and optical characteristics. In addition, this bonding structure is remarkably robust if care is taken not to forcefully touch the VCSEL s. B. Top Bottom Contacts The top bottom contact bonding process is illustrated in Fig. 5. This process is simpler then coplanar flip chip bonding since the coplanar electroplating is not necessary and only one mesa etch is required. The simple square shape of the VCSEL mesa (as opposed to the rectangular shape of the coplanar bonding) also makes this structure more robust. Depositing the p-contacts is the first step in the process followed by electroplating the Au posts. The VCSEL s mesas were then isolated by dry etching below the bottom of the VCSEL s and oxidized. The metallizations were carried out before the etching, because these VCSEL mesas are about 10 m

4 204 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1999 Fig. 5. Illustration of a top bottom bonded VCSEL to an electronic chip showing the basic structural features of the bonding. (a) Fig. 6. Scanning electron photomicrograph of VCSEL s top bottom bonded to a patterned GaAs chip. high which reduces the resolution of the photolithography. Ti Pt Au metallization was used for the p-contact instead of Ti Au, since the Pt is needed as a diffusion barrier to prevent Au diffusing deep into the device during the 430 C oxidization. The electroplated Au post also protects the ohmic contact from the corrosive environment of the oxidation step. Au is deposited onto the Al pads of the CMOS chip and a Au post electroplated to the approximate height of the VCSEL s in order to form part of the top contacts. The height tolerance of this post is greater than with the coplanar technique. The bonding and substrate removal process is similar to that used in the coplanar flip chip, except that the bonding alignment is not as critical, because there is only one solder bonding pad for each VCSEL. Furthermore, there is no coplanar accuracy problem. Thus, higher bonding yield can be expected. After the substrate is removed, the epoxy covering the Au post on the electronic chip is oxygen plasma etched away. Alternately, all of the epoxy can be removed and polyimide spun on and patterned to provide an insulating planarization layer. The n-contact metal of the VCSEL s and the metal trace between VCSEL n-contact and the Au posts is then (b) Fig. 7. Characteristics for 10 VCSEL s top bottom bonded to a GaAs substrate. (a) L I curves. (b) I V curves. deposited and annealed. Step coverage with this process is not a serious problem since the epoxy provides a bridge between the VCSEL and the Au post or the etched contact holes in the planarizing polyimide provides a smooth transition between height differences in the electroplating and the top contact. Increasing the thickness of the metal trace by electroplating also help the step coverage problem. The scanning electron photomicrograph of Fig. 6 illustrates VCSEL s bonded to a patterned substrate using the top bottom technique. Fig. 7 shows 10 and curves for VCSEL s bonded to a GaAs substrate. These 15- m aperture VCSEL s have a threshold current of 2.5 ma, a threshold voltage of 2.6 V, a dynamic resistance of 65 and a maximum power out of 6 mw. C. Top-Contact Bonding With this third technique, the VCSEL wafer is first attached to the electronic chip with epoxy, the GaAs substrate removed and the remaining epitaxial layers processed into lasers as shown in Fig. 8. The epoxy or other nonconductive adhesives used to attach the wafer must have low shrinkage after curing, otherwise the very thin epitaxial layers will be distorted by the bonding material causing breakage, difficulties with photolithography and/or degradation of the VCSEL characteristics.

5 PU et al.: HYBRID INTEGRATION OF VCSEL S TO CMOS INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 205 Fig. 8. Illustration of a top-contact bonded VCSEL to an electronic chip showing the basic structural features of the bonding. (a) Fig. 9. Scanning electron photomicrograph of VCSEL s top-contact bonded to a patterned GaAs chip. The adhesive used to attach the VCSEL wafer must be able to withstand the 430 C oxidation temperature. After substrate removal, the VCSEL processing begins with the deposition of the n-mirror contacts, followed by dry etching a device mesa down to the p-mirror. These mesas are shorter than those in coplanar flip chip structure, because the n-mirror is thinner than the p-mirror. The p-contacts are then deposited and isolation mesas were wet etched with the epoxy serving as the wet etch stop layer. The epoxy not under the mesas is then removed with an oxygen plasma, which also undercuts the mesas. After the VCSEL apertures were formed by wet oxidization, polyimide was spun on and patterned to provide an insulating layer. Au was then deposited and patterned into traces that connected the p- and n-contacts to their corresponding bonding pads on the electronic chip. The Au trace step coverage is reliable, since the polyimide planarizes the surface and the side walls of the contact holes in the polyimide are 45. The height and structure of the surface topography of the epitaxial layer limits the resolution of the photolithography after it is bonded on the electronic chip. Thus, the more processing steps carried out after bonding, the worse the uniformity of the VCSEL characteristics. Since this top-contact bonding technique has the most process steps after bonding among these three bonding methods, it will probably have the most variation in the device characteristics. (b) Fig. 10. Characteristics for six VCSEL top contact bonded to a GaAs substrate. (a) L I curves. (b) I V curves. The SEM photomicrograph of Fig. 9 shows individual VC- SEL s bonded to a specially prepared GaAs substrate using the top-contact technique. The bonding is seen to be robust and the alignment of the contacts to have high tolerance. The and characteristics from 6 VCSEL are shown in Fig. 10, verify that functioning VCSEL s can be successfully bonded by this technique. While the power out of from these VCSEL s is comparable with that obtained from the other bonding techniques, the general characteristics are both more variable and differ from that commonly observed. This, we believe, is due to the starting VCSEL wafer which had a different design.

6 206 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1999 TABLE I COMPARISON OF THE IMPORTANT PROCESSING STEPS FOR THE THREE VCSEL BONDING TECHNIQUES III. COMPARISON OF THE BONDING TECHNIQUES The previous section has shown that all three of the techniques produce workable VCSEL arrays bonded to CMOS and/or other substrates. This section compares the processing required for each of the techniques and discusses critical processing steps. The characteristics of each of the bonding processes are also summarized and discussed. A. Comparison of the Processing Each of the bonding techniques requires many processing steps, the majority of which are routine, e.g., rinsing, plasma ashing, dry etching, metal deposition, etc. These are common to all three of the techniques and do not provide a basis for differentiating the difficulty and/or scalability of the processes. The more critical processing steps and processing characteristics are listed in Table I. The processing steps that may limit the scalability of the VCSEL array bonding or that pose the greatest difficulty to achieving high yield and high performance have been indicated on the table with an asterisk. These limiting/critical steps were chosen based on our experience using our equipment and processing facilities. Using production type equipment with additional process controls should mitigate our choice, e.g., we use a mask aligner to align and perform the initial attachment, while a wafer bonding machine is much better suited for this task. Some processing steps, however, are independent of the equipment, e.g., oxidation after bonding and contact metal deposition. For this case, the metals on both the IC and VCSEL chips must be protected from the harsh oxidizing atmosphere. In addition if polyimide or epoxy is applied before oxidation, then their properties or mechanical integrity could be compromised. Table I compares seven different processing parameters. The number of mask level is often taken as a measure of the complexity and yield of a process. However, for our small scale array fabrication, the number of mask levels did not appear to be a factor, nor is the height of the surface topography steps for any of the three VCSEL bonding techniques. The later is due to the low photolithography resolution required by the processes. The accuracy of the VCSEL attachment alignment is also not critical since the pads are large (30 m 30 m) and sufficiently widely separated (25 m). It is this separation that sets the limit on the allowable misalignment. The size of the bonding pads and their separation are not expected to be decrease more that about a factor of two or three, since the overall size of the VCSEL s can not decrease much and the VCSEL/pixel density will not increase beyond 1000/cm. The heat generated by the VCSEL will primarily be transmitted to the substrate through the attachment material. For the coplanar and top bottom techniques, the VCSEL attachment is via the metal contacts, thus the size of the pads may be determined more by the need to heat sink the VCSEL s than by the alignment tolerance. Since the bonded VCSEL arrays become part of an optical processing/interconnection system, optical alignment must also be considered. However, bonding arrays as a unit has the advantage of maintaining the pitch and separation established by the photomasks used to fabricate the VCSEL s. This is independent of the tolerance for bonding to the substrate pads. Thus alignment of the VCSEL/CMOS chip in the optical system is the same as required for any array of VCSEL s. Exposing the n- and p-mirror contact metallizations to the 430 C steam used to grow the oxide confinement may degrade the metal and increase the contact resistance, since the threshold voltage for the top contact technique is significantly higher then the other two bonding techniques. However, with proper design of the metallization, this problem can be minimized. The difficult processing steps that may limit the scaleablity/yield of the VCSEL/CMOS arrays is different for each of the three techniques. For the coplanar flip chip bonding, the critical step is the electroplating of the n-mirror contact to the same level as the p-mirror contact. If the two contacts are not at the same height, then one of the contact will not properly bond to the pad on the electronic chip. The process can be improved by increasing the thickness of the solder, which can then ball up high enough to connect the pad and electroplated Au. This will require a larger bonding pad, which may not be desirable. Further research on the metallization is required to solve this problem for large arrays. The top bottom technique requires connecting the electroplated Au post to the n-mirror contact with a deposited metal film. This requires using a 10- m-thick polyimide planarization layer on which the thin film is deposited. Therefore, the polyimide is used to form a smooth transition between the VCSEL s and Au posts, otherwise a break in the metal trace will occur as discussed previously. Increasing the thickness of the metal trace by electroplating Au has been found to improve the step coverage. The top contact technique requires attaching the VCSEL wafer to the CMOS chip with a nonconductive adhesive such as epoxy or polyimide. After removal of the VCSEL wafer substrate and formation of the VCSEL posts by dry etching, the bonded system, with both VCSEL s and IC chip, must be exposed to steam at 430 C for 25 min. Therefore the nonconductive adhesive also protects the bonding pads on the IC surface. This high temperature processing degrades the epoxy and may cause the VCSEL s to detach from the CMOS chip. No serious problem arose with our 4 4 arrays but finding a suitable high temperature adhesive may become an issue as the array size increases. Matsuo et al. [9] used polyimide which may be the best material for this bonding technique.

7 PU et al.: HYBRID INTEGRATION OF VCSEL S TO CMOS INTEGRATED CIRCUITS 207 TABLE II COMPARISON OF THE MEASURED ELECTRICAL AND OPTICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VCSEL s BOND WITH THE THREE DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES There are also questions related to the compatibility of bonding GaAs microchips to silicon CMOS integrated circuits. Our experience with bonding small arrarys to small chips indicates that there is no significant difference in bonding the VCSEL s to GaAs MESFET chips, CMOS chips and patterned GaAs substrates. However, differences may surface when large arrays are bonded to large chips due to differences in flatness/bowing or thermal expansion. These issues may also influence the choice of bonding technique and need to be investigated. B. Bonded VCSEL Characteristics As seen above, all three bonding techniques resulted in working VCSEL s with reasonable electrical and optical characteristics. This indicates all of these techniques are possible candidates for large-scale hybrid integration of VCSEL s. Electrically, the dynamic resistance and threshold voltage are the most important parameters in judging the bonding techniques since they depend on the quality of the contacts. The threshold current is also important, but it depends on the mirror reflectivity, material quality and the aperture size. Our bonded arrays were fabricated from three different wafer and fabricated at different times and thus had different apertures and other process variable. In an attempt to obtain a more meaningful comparison of the after bonding characteristics, we have processed a set of 8 8 arrays at the same time, i.e., the arrays were oxidized and metalized at the same time. The former should result in approximately the same aperture for all of the VCSEL s. This appears to be the case since the threshold current and maximum output power for the three different bonding techniques are approximately equal. Unfortunately, the yield for these processing runs were not as high as the previously obtained due to some small mistakes in the processing. The electrical/optical characteristic for these VCSEL s are shown in Figs. 4, 7, and 10 and summarized in Table II. At this stage in the development of the bonding techniques, it is wise not to over analyze the data listed in this table, however, several observations can be made. First the resistance of all three techniques is low, in fact the 30 for the coplanar technique is as low as commercial, unbonded VCSEL s. The voltage at threshold, however is significantly higher, although the of bonded VCSEL s of previous processing runs were as low as 1.5 V. In addition, the of VCSEL s bonded with the top bonding technique has consistently been higher than the other two techniques and has never been lower than 3.4 V. This could be caused by a lack of intercavity contacting layer in the VCSEL structure. Since all three techniques yield approximately the same and power out, one can also conclude that the different processing does not change the basic VCSEL operation or characteristics. Thus, these parameters do not provide a basis of selecting the optimum bonding technique. The thermal resistance and parasitic capacitance of the bonded VCSEL s is under investigation. Preliminary data indicates that the parasitic capacitance is low and that the thermal resistance is in the same range as unbonded VCSEL arrays [13], [14]. The mechanical robustness of the bonding technique is also important but hard to quantify at this time. Thermal stress and vibration tests will provide some measure of comparison. IV. CONCLUSION We report successfully bonding arrays of individual VC- SEL s to CMOS and other electronic substrates using three different techniques. The three bonding techniques were sufficiently developed to allow bonding of 4 4 and 8 8 arrays of VCSEL s with yields up to 60%. The bonded VCSEL had electrical and optical characteristics typical of unbonded VCSEL s. Threshold voltages down to 1.5 V and dynamic resistance as low as 30 were measured indicating good electrical contacts can be obtained. Optical power as high as 10 mw for a VCSEL with a 20 m aperture and 0.7 mw with a 6- m aperture were observed. In addition VCSEL s bonded to CMOS chips were operated at 200 Mb/s with rise and fall times 1 ns. These results verify that the bonding processes does not significantly degrade the quality of the VCSEL s. The important process step were summarized and compared in order to determine which of the step(s) may limit the scalability and yield of the bonded VCSEL arrays. Control of the height of the electroplated Au, contact metallization and step coverage were singled out as steps that may require further research. Thermal resistance, parasitic capacitance and mechanical robustness of the bonded VCSEL s still need to be investigated in order to complete the evaluation of the techniques and determine the optimum method of bonding. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank K. Choquette of Sandia National Laboratories for providing the VCSEL wafers, and K. Geib of Sandia and A. Goulakov of Colorado State University for performing dry etching on some of the VCSEL arrays. REFERENCES [1] K. D. Choquette and H. Q. Hou, Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers: Moving from research to manufacturing, Proc. IEEE, vol. 85, pp , [2] J. A. Neff, C. Chen, T. McLaren, C. C. Mao, A. Fedor, W. Berseth, Y. C. Lee, and V. Morozov, VCSEL/CMOS smart pixel arrays for freespace optical interconnects, in Proc. Third Int. Conf. Massively Parallel Processing Using Optical Interconnections, Oct [3] G. G. Ortiz, S. Q. Luong, S. Z. Sun, J. Cheng, H. Q. Hou, G. A. Vawter, and B. E. Hammons, Monolithic, multiple wavelength VCSEL s arrays by surface controlled MOCVD growth rate enhancement and reduction, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 9, pp , Aug [4] M. W. Haney, M. P. Christiansen, P. Milojkovic, J. Ekman, P. Chandramani, R. Rozier, F. Kiamilev, Y. Liu, M. Hibbs-Brenner, J. Nohave, E. Kalweit, S. Bounnak, T. Martaand, and B. Walterson, FAST-net optical interconnection prototype demonstration, SPIE, vol. 3490, pp , 1998.

8 208 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 5, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 1999 [5] S. Daryanani, H. Fathollahnejad, D. L. Mathine, R. Droopad, A. Kubes, and G. N. Maracas, Integration of a single vertical-cavity surfaceemitting lasers onto a CMOS inverter chip, Electron. Lett., vol. 31, pp , [6] D. L. Mathine, R. Droopad, and G. N. Maracas, A vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser appliquéd to a 0.8-m NMOS driver, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 9, pp , July [7] S. M. Fike, B. Buchanan, N. M. Joderst, M. A. Brooke, T. G. Morris, and S. P. DeWeerth, array of thin-film photodetectors vertically interconnected to silicon circuitry, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 7, pp , Oct [8] H.-J. J. Yeh and J. S. Smith, Integration of GaAs vertical-cavity surfaceemitting laser on Si by substrate removal, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 64, pp , Mar [9] S. Matsuo, T. Nakahara, K. Tateno, and T. Kurodawa, Novel technology for hybrid integration of photonic and electronic circuits, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 8, pp , Nov [10] R. Pu, E. M. Hayes, R. Jurrat, C. W. Wilmsen, K. D. Choquette, H. Q. Hou, and K. M. Geib, VCSEL s bonded directly to foundry fabricated GaAs smart pixel arrays, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 9, pp , Dec [11] K. W. Goossen, J, E. Cunningham, and W. Y. Jan, GaAs 850 nm modulators solder-bonded to silicon, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 5, pp , July [12] K. W. Goossen, J. A. Walker, L. A. D Asaro, S. P. Hui, B. Tseng, R. Leibenguth, D. Kossives, D. D. Bacon, D. Dahringer, L. M. F. Chirovshky, A. L. Lentine, and D. A. B. Miller, GaAs MOW modulators integrated with silicon CMOS, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 7, pp , Apr [13] M. H. MacDougal, J. Geske, C.-K. Lin, A. E. Bond, and P. H. Dapkus, Thermal impedance of VCSEL s with AlO x -GaAs DBR s, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 10, pp , Jan [14] T. Wipiejewski, D. B. Young, B. J. Thibeault, and L. A. Coldren, Thermal crosstalk in VCSEL arrays, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 8, pp , Aug Chunjie Duan was born in Taiyuan, China, in He received the B.S. degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, China in 1992 and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, in For his thesis research, he designed and demonstrated an asynchronous transfer mode optoelectronic switch. Previous to his graduate studies, he was a systems engineer for Alcatel Bell Telephone MFG. Co. Presently, he is a hardware engineer for QUALCOMM Inc. Carl W. Wilmsen (S 60 M 68 SM 96) received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1966, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. His first 20 years of research were devoted to the investigation of Josphson tunnelling, oxide growth on III V compound semiconductors, semiconductor surface passivation, and surface analysis using electron spectroscopes. Since that time his research has concentrated on the development of optoelectronic switching devices, VCSEL s and optoelectronic parallel processing systems. He served as Department Head at Colorado State for seven years and is presently an Associate Director of the Optoelectronic Computing System Center. Rui Pu was born in China. She received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronic engineering in 1992 and 1995, respectively. She is working toward the Ph.D. degree in oxide-confined VCSEL s and VCSEL-based smart pixels at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO. Her M.S. thesis research investigated monolithic integration of distributedfeedback lasers and multiple-quantum-well modulators.