We all know that pulse laser diode is widely used in daily life, so do you know the difference between it and VCSEL laser? Let's take a look at it together.

The peak power is particularly high.

Some 905nm and 808nm pulse EEL can hit tens of watts and hundreds of watts in an instant. Doing ranging and radar explosion depends on the energy of this moment.

Asymmetry of beam divergence angle

An angle is horizontal and an angle is vertical, which is the natural shortcoming of EEL. Therefore, it is often necessary to align the collimator lens and the cylindrical lens.

Suitable for long-distance irradiation

Because light diverges little in one direction, energy can be concentrated in a certain area.

Fast impulse response

However, the driving requirements are high, and the current is often a pulse of several amperes or even dozens of amperes.

Can't make too big an array.

Limited by the structure, multi-core array has an upper limit, and it does not have the array ability of dozens or even hundreds of points like VCSEL.

Characteristics of VCSEL

VCSEL is a vertical light emitting device, which has a completely different structure, and the light is emitted from the top.

The light spot is very uniform and the divergence angle is symmetrical.

Unlike EEL, VCSEL are inherently circular divergent.

You can easily make arrays

This is particularly important, such as 3D structured light of mobile phones, point cloud projection of lidar,

They are all made by VCSEL array+DOE diffuser.

Dozens and hundreds of luminous points work synchronously, which is common for VCSEL.

Power does not pursue peak burst, but pursues stable, controllable and fast modulation.

The modulation frequency of VCSEL can be very high (hundreds of MHz),

This is difficult for EEL to do.

Temperature performance is more stable than general EEL.

In many consumer electronics applications, stability is the priority.

The above is the difference between pulsed laser diode and VCSEL laser. I hope you will have a clear understanding after reading it.