High-intensity bowtie-shaped nano-aperture vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser for near-field optics

We report a high-intensity nano-aperture vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) utilizing a bowtie-shaped aperture. A maximum power of 188 microW is achieved from a 180 nm bowtie aperture at a wavelength of 970 nm. The near-field full width at half-maximum intensity spot size 20 nm away from the bowtie aperture is 64 nm x 66 nm from simulation, and the peak near-field intensity is estimated to be as high as 47 mW/microm(2). This intensity is high enough to realize near-field optical recording, and the small spot size corresponds to storage densities up to 150 Gbits/in(2). The bowtie-aperture VCSEL also enables other applications, such as compact high-intensity probes for ultrahigh-resolution near-field imaging and single molecule fluorescence and spectroscopy.