Abstract
The influence of electrostatic discharge (ESD) stress voltage on the device performance of 850 nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) was investigated. It was observed that the ESD effect induces dark-region defects, which acts as nonradiative recombination centers in the active layer and increase the leakage current and degrade the light output power. It was shown that the VCSEL exhibits multiple transverse mode without ESD stress voltage. It was demonstrated that the device exhibits a weak but single fundamental mode with smaller beam divergence by increasing the stress voltage up t0 2.6 kV.