Wavelength modulation detection of water vapor with a vertical cavity surface-emitting laser

David Christian Hovde and Craig A. Parsons

A vertical cavity surface-emitting laser was studied for gas-sensing applications. Properties of the 962-nm laser that were measured include side-mode suppression, wavelength tuning with temperature and current, power versus injection current, and the amplitude noise spectrum. With wavelength modulation spectroscopy, a rms noise level of 2 104 absorbance units was achieved. The large current tuning range 25 cm1 and smaller amplitude modulation 11%cm1 of the vertical cavity laser compare favorably with FabryPerot and distributed feedback diode lasers for spectroscopic gas sensing, especially at atmospheric pressure. 1997 Optical Society of America

Because of their room-temperature operation and ber-optic compatibility, near-infrared diode lasers have found increasing use in commercial spectroscopic sensors for trace gases in such applications as atmospheric chemistry, combustion research, emissions monitoring, and toxic gas detection. These applications demand high sensitivity and specicity for a particular species with an instrument response that is rapid 1 s and accurate 10%. To achieve this level of performance, laser devices are required that emit a single frequency that can be tuned across a spectral absorption feature of the molecule to be detected. With frequency or wavelength modulation absorption spectroscopy WMS techniques that are used to achieve high sensitivity, noise levels can be as small as 105107 of the laser power, resulting in a wide dynamic range with detection limits in the parts per million to parts per billion range for many chemical species.17 FabryPerot lasers are of limited usefulness in commercial instrumentation because they exhibit mode hops that can degrade performance unless the laser output is monitored by a trained operator. External cavity lasers extend the singlemode tuning range of FabryPerot lasers and suppress mode hops, but these benets are achieved at the expense of a much larger instrument and at high
David Christian Hovde is with Southwest Sciences, Inc., Ohio Operations, 6837 Main Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45244. Craig A. Parsons is with Particle Measuring Systems, 5475 Airport Boulevard, Boulder, Colorado 80301. Received 3 November 1995; revised manuscript received 29 July 1996. 0003-693597061135-04$10.000 1997 Optical Society of America

cost. Single-mode output is guaranteed in distributed feedback or distributed Bragg reector lasers, but such structures are difcult to fabricate, resulting in high unit cost. The need for optical isolators adds further to the cost. Vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers VCSELs promise low cost, high manufacturing volume, and single-longitudinal and transverse-mode operation.8,9 Despite this favorable combination of price and performance, there has been little research reported on the use of VCSELs for gas detection.10,11 In this paper we present measurements of properties important in evaluating the suitability of VCSELs for gas sensing by WMS. The emphasis in our research is measuring properties of the laser that have an impact on gas sensing. These properties include current and temperature tuning, side-mode suppression, IV light curves, spectral noise density, and the variation in noise with injection current. To test the absorption sensitivity that could be achieved, the spectrum of water vapor was recorded both by direct absorption and by wavelength modulation. Water vapor has discrete spectral lines near the wavelength of the available laser 962 nm, but because this wavelength is not well matched to the water vapor spectrum much stronger lines occur near 940 nm, no attempt was made to determine the minimum detectable water concentration. Development of VCSELs near 940 nm is under way. In a future publication we hope to report their use for water vapor detection, including measurementssuch as the WMS signal at pressures relevant to tropospheric detectionspecic to particular applications; however, such studies are beyond the scope of this research. We recently measured oxygen and nitrogen
20 February 1997 Vol. 36, No. 6 APPLIED OPTICS 1135

dioxide with VCSELs, obtaining results similar to those presented here.10 Bhadri et al.11 achieved higher sensitivity than we report here in measurements of oxygen with a 760-nm VCSEL by avoiding e talon interference effects. Both frequency modulation absorption spectroscopy and WMS have been used effectively by a number of researchers to suppress laser excess noise and achieve high sensitivity.1,2,5 The two techniques are related theoretically,6 comparisons have been published,4,7 and atmospheric science applications have been described that include the incorporation of sophisticated digital ltering algorithms.3 In diode laser WMS, one can vary the laser frequency by modulating the injection current.6 For sine wave modulation, t 0 m sint. (1)
Fig. 1. VCSEL front surface output power solid curve and external applied voltage dashed curve versus injection current.

The modulation frequency is typically in the range from 1 kHz to 10 MHz. The modulation amplitude m is chosen to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio. The molecular absorption converts the frequency modulation to amplitude modulation, so that the absorption signal can be recovered with standard lock-in demodulation methods at a frequency n n 1, 2, 3, . . . where laser noise is minimal. When the 2 signal is recovered, the signal is optimized for m 2, where is the linewidth HWHM of an isolated absorption feature.6 Thus the current tuning rate of the laser ddi, is an important device parameter. The tuning range that is due to temperature and current tuning is also a critical property for sensor applications because it determines which spectral features can be measured and the manufacturing tolerance for the laser wavelength. One problem that arises in WMS is overloading the optical receiver by the strong amplitude modulation at that is independent of any absorption feature. This power modulation can have a magnitude of P 2 dPdi ddi1 . Nonlinearities in the power versus the current curve can also generate signals at harmonics that will interfere with detection of the absorption signal. An array of independent VCSELs was fabricated and tested at Bandgap Technologies. The laser structure was grown by molecular beam epitaxy on 75-mm-diameter n-type GaAs substrates. Alternating quarter-wavelength-thick layers of AlAs and GaAs comprised the mirrors. The bottom mirror was n doped with Si; the top mirror was p doped with C. The cavity region was one wavelength thick and contained three GaAsIn0.2Ga0.8As quantum wells. Gain-guided, 10-m-diameter VCSELs were dened by way of proton implantation. Each device produced as much as 1 mW of near-infrared radiation near 962 nm. In Fig. 1 the light-current curve for a typical device shows a linear region just above threshold, but it becomes strongly nonlinear at 12 mA. The short cavity operates in a singlelongitudinal mode. The largest transverse side modes were measured to be 32 dB of the main mode
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at 10-mA injection current, growing to 25 dB at 15 mA. The remaining measurements were performed at Southwest Sciences. The laser array was mounted in an aluminum block thermally stabilized to 0.01 K. An ILX Model LDC 3722 diode laser controller was used to set the laser current and the block temperature. We obtained static wavelength tuning characteristics by directing the beam into a commercial wavemeter. The temperature tuning rate ddT over the range from 12 to 30 C was 0.79 cm1 K1, in good agreement with the results of Bae et al. who used lasers from the same wafer.12 The dc tuning rate including the effects of self-heating was 3.1 cm1 mA1 over the range from 9.7 to 17 mA, but with systematic deviation from linearity to 0.25 cm1. The noise spectrum of the laser was measured with an unbiased, 300-m-diameter InGaAs photodiode 0.45 AW at 962 nm mounted directly across the 50- input of a video amplier whose output was routed to a Tek 2712 spectrum analyzer. The laser noise spectrum at 12.77-mA injection current, which is just above the knee in the power curve, is shown in Fig. 2. Above 3 MHz, the noise power in a 1-Hz bandwidth corresponds to 4 107 of the laser power, near the shot-noise limit of 3.4 107. At other injection currents, the noise oor was higher, as much as 10 dB higher for injection currents just above threshold and at 17 mA. The spectrum of water vapor was recorded with a low-pressure cell equipped with multipass optics that provided a 46-m optical path in 64 passes. The total pressure in the cell was below 1 Torr, but it could not be measured accurately because of the effects of outgassing and the use of a low-resolution pressure gauge. From our measured absorbance and published line strengths,13 a water vapor pressure of 0.6 Torr is inferred. The maximum absorption signal observed was 8.5% at 10,385.3 cm1. We obtained a direct absorption scan Fig. 3, top across the spectral region from 10,389 to 10,381 cm1 962.57963.28

Fig. 2. Noise spectrum at 12.5-mA injection current. The noise oor is essentially the quantum shot-noise limit.

nm by sweeping the injection current from 11.9 to 14.4 mA while holding the heat sink temperature xed at 28.3 C. The laser beam was chopped and detected with a lock-in amplier. The observed line positions agree with the spectral positions predicted from the HITRAN database13 to within 0.15 cm1. The relative amplitudes are also in good agreement. To obtain a rough estimate of the laser linewidth, the strong water absorption feature at 10,385.3 cm1 was t to a Gaussian line shape with a HWHM of 870 150 MHz on top of a weak, broad absorption as a result of water vapor in room air. This tted value is substantially greater than the expected Doppler linewidth for water vapor of 455 MHz. Pressure broadening, calculated with the self-broadening coefcient of 0.443 cm1 atm1 tabulated in the HITRAN

Fig. 3. Water vapor spectrum from 10,381 to 10,389 cm1 obtained by sweeping the injection current from 14.4 to 11.9 mA. Top panel: direct absorption spectrum. The strongest feature has an absorbance of 8.5% and an apparent linewidth HWHM of 870 MHz. Bottom panel: same current range recorded with WMS by modulating the injection current at 10 kHz and demodulating at 20 kHz.

database,13 contributes only 10.5 MHz to the linewidth at the estimated water vapor pressure and is neglected in the t. This implies a broad laser linewidth of 750 MHz over the course of 3 s to sweep across the line, assuming the widths add in quadrature. Other researchers have measured VCSEL linewidth power products in the range of 595 MHz mW.14 16 Possible reasons for the excessive broadening that we observed include current supply jitter over the time scale of the measurement the high tuning rate of the laser demands a quiet current supply and feedback from the collimating lens or other optics. More research is required to determine the cause of the apparent laser broadening. The WMS spectrum of water vapor was recorded under the same conditions as the direct absorption spectrum Fig. 3, bottom. Instead of chopping the laser beam, we modulated the injection current at 10 kHz. A commercial lock-in amplier with a time constant of 100 ms was used to demodulate the photocurrent at a detection frequency of 20 kHz. The rms noise level measured over a 1-cm1 interval was equivalent to an absorbance peak of the demodulated 2 signal of 2 104 absorbance units. This noise results from accidental e talon fringes formed in the optical path with a free spectral range of 0.5 cm1. The WMS technique offers higher sensitivity and atter baselines than direct absorption, as expected from results with edge-emitting lasers. VCSELs exhibit several properties that are attractive for sensor applications. The current tuning range is wide: 25 cm1 for the device tested compared with 2 cm1 for a typical distributed feedback laser and 12 cm1 for a FabryPerot laser. VCSELs near 760 nm also exhibit a large tuning range. The fractional amplitude modulation per unit frequency change was 11% cm1 near the center of the tuning range currents 12 mA. For comparison, distributed feedback lasers tested in our laboratory exhibited amplitude modulation values approximately six times larger. However, this VCSEL exhibits nonlinearities in the power versus the current curve that can introduce an offset in the demodulated WMS spectrum. The large apparent linewidth of the VCSEL in the present setup can reduce sensitivity in low-pressure measurements in which Doppler broadening is dominant, but for samples at 1-atm pressure, pressure broadening can result in a linewidth of 3 GHz, and no loss of sensitivity is expected. At present, VCSELs are available in the range of 650 1000 nm.9 Important species that can be detected in this spectral region include O2, H2O, NO2 and numerous atoms and radicals. Ongoing development of VCSELs in the 1000 2000-nm spectral window will permit a wide range of compounds to be monitored with these laser sources. Our research at Southwest Sciences was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DEFG03-91ER81211.
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