At the 2023 CS International Conference in Brussels, Belgium, Leah gave an invited talk on her work making heterogeneously integrated VCSELs on silicon. These VCSELs integrated via epitaxial transfer have improved thermal performances compared to non-integrated counterparts.
The group attended the “Celebrating the Life of Professor Emeritus Nick Holonyak Jr.” service in honor of Dr. Holonyak’s passing. Dr. John Dallesasse spoke as a past student of Holonyak, and Leah Espenhahn spoke as a current student of Dallesasse and thus a “research grandchild” of Holonyak.
After a number of speeches in honor of Dr. Holonyak, red LEDs in heart casings were past out to attendees in honor of Holonyak, who created the first visible LED. The group honors the passing of a great man, and give their best wishes to his widowed wife, Kay.
Robert Kaufman, Kevin Pikul, and Leah Espenhahn present a high-level view on the research conducted within the group at the 2023 Engineering Research Fair. Over the course of two hours, 74 undergraduate students show interest in the group and the research being performed.
Leah Espenhahn, Kevin Pikul, and Prof. Dallesasse are interviewed about their article published in Compound Semiconductor. They explore the topics of VCSELs and III-V/Si integration via epitaxial transfer.
Kevin Pikul is awarded the best student presentation award of CS MANTECH 2021 based on his paper titled “Standing-Wave Engineering for Mode-Control in Oxide-Confined Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers”.
Patrick Su demonstrates record high-power single-mode performance in VCSELs using strain-controlled impurity-induced disordering apertures. Oxide-VCSELs of aperture sizes from 9-13 um are shown to achieve record single-mode output powers of 8.52 mW, 9.57 mW, 10.20 mW, 10.57 mW, and 10.95 mW respectively.
“VCSELs are a type of device that are seeing broad use in a growing number of applications,” said Dallesasse. “They are being looked at for use in self-driving cars that utilize LIDAR, and are already extensively used in the fiber optic networks of large data centers.”
“We’re specifically looking at ways of improving the optical beam that comes out of the VCSEL,” said Dallesasse. “When you have a device like a VCSEL, the optical modes can be thought of as the light patterns on the surface. In order for you to utilize patterns, it’s desirable to be able to control those light patterns.”
The Advanced Semiconductor Device and Integration Group was awarded the CS MANTECH 2018 Best Student Paper Award by Patrick Su, Fu-Chen (Alex) Hsiao, Tommy O’Brien and Professor Dallesasse on Controlling Impurity-Induced Disordering via Mask Strain for High-Performance VCSELs.