Tunnel junctions for long-wavelength VCSELs

1. A tunnel junction device comprising:

an InP substrate, the substrate having an upper side, and a lower side opposite the upper side, and being characterized by a substrate bandgap and a substrate lattice constant;

an active region disposed over the substrate, the active region having an effective bandgap configured to generate light at a lasing wavelength in response to injected charge; and

first tunnel junction layer of a first semiconductor material disposed over the active region, wherein the first semiconductor material includes aluminum (Al), gallium (Ga), arsenic (As) and antimony (Sb), the first tunnel junction layer having an effective bandgap greater than the photon energy of the lasing wavelength at room temperature by at least 80 milli electron Volts;

a first dopant disposed in the first semiconductor material to form a p-type tunnel junction layer with a carbon concentration in a range from about 1.5×10 19 cm −3 to 3×10 20 cm −3 ; and

a second tunnel junction layer of a second semiconductor material juxtaposed with the first tunnel junction layer to form a tunnel junction structure, wherein the second semiconductor material includes indium (In), gallium (Ga), arsenic (As) and one of aluminum (Al) and phosphorous (P), wherein at least one of the tunnel layers has a strain matched within +/−2% of the substrate lattice constant.

2. The device of claim 1 , further comprising a second dopant disposed in the second semiconductor material to provide an n-type tunnel junction layer with a silicon concentration in a range from about 1.5×10 19 cm −3 to 5×10 19 cm −3 .

3. The device of claim 2 , wherein the tunnel junction device is an OMCVD device grown in an OMCVD chamber in a range about 400–700 degree C. for growing the layers.

4. The device of claim 1 , wherein the first dopant is doped sufficiently high in the first semiconductor material having an intrinsic bandgap of the p-type layer to form the p-type tunnel junction layer with the carbon concentration so high that undesirable bandtails are formed which decrease the intrinsic bandgap of the p-type layer to the effective bandgap.

5. The device of claim 4 , wherein the first tunnel junction layer has a decreased wavelength at which absorption occurs in the p-type AlGaAsSb layer for compensating the effect of the undesirable bandtails.

6. The device of claim 5 , wherein the first tunnel junction layer has a composition of the p-type AlGaAsSb layer of predetermined Al/Ga and As/Sb ratios in order to obtain a low enough absorption such that the p-type AlGaAsSb layer has the effective bandgap greater than the photon energy of the lasing wavelength at room temperature by at least 80 milli electron Volts.

7. The device of claim 1 , further comprising:

an optical cavity for

locating the active region in the optical cavity

such that the tunnel junction structure can inject charge into the active region and can inject current into the active region using the tunnel junction structure.