The company: VERTILAS is a spin-off from the Walter Schottky Institute (WSI) of the Technical University of Munich and was founded in December 2001 by four members of the institute. The firm became operational in May 2002 after earning several private equity and public fundings. Headquartered in Garching near Munich, the present staff includes 13 employees. The company goal is to develop, manufacture and market innovative optoelectronic components, in particular long-wavelength vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) based on its buried tunnel junction (BTJ) technology. Today, VERTILAS is recognized as the leading manufacturer for long-wavelength VCSELs. The company maintains relationships to worldwide customers basically in the fields of optical communication and gas sensing. VERTILAS is participating in several projects with industrial and university partners.

The resources: For the frontend production of its wafers, VERTILAS has access to state-of-the art equipment at the WSI. The following device characterization is conducted in the company’s own facilities. This includes a temperature dependent optical and electrical characterization both on wafer level and of single devices with a fully automated wafer prober as well as single and multi device test stations, a dicing saw, die and wire bonders and sophisticated qualification equipment (burn in and ageing) as well as packaging solutions. The latter ones comprise a wide variety of housings with optional cooling, anti-reflection coatings or fibre pigtailing.

The role in the project: The role of VERTILAS in the project is to characterize electrically pumped VCSELs and to establish the interface between chip technology and application compliant packaging solutions. For this purpose and in close collaboration with the project partners, the existing InP-based chip refinement will be adapted to the new VCSELs. GaSb-VCSELs will be thoroughly studied in terms of optical and electrical output characteristics, temperature behaviour and liftetime predictions. The goal is to provide essential feedback for the chip manufacturing process and to supply customer specific packaged devices.