VCSEL，Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser,The main structure of VCSEL is composed of two distributed Bragg reflectors (DBR) of p-type and n-type and the active area in the middle. The length of the VCSEL cavity is similar to the wavelength, it is easy to realize single longitudinal mode lasing, and has excellent beam quality, which is suitable for data communication and various sensing fields.
In 2004, VCSEL entered consumer electronics for the first time: Logitech MX1000 laser wireless mouse, which became the light source of laser navigation (positioning) sensors. In 2016, VCSEL entered Apple's iPhone 7 series mobile phones with the help of ToF proximity/range sensors to realize face proximity sensing, autofocus and other functions. At the same time, VCSEL also uses the proximity/range sensor to enter Apple's AirPods headset to realize the wearing monitoring function. So far, the application of many Apple products has promoted the scale of the VCSEL market to a new level.
In 2017, the VCSEL array entered Apple iPhone X for the first time and became the light source for 3D face recognition. This has also ignited the entire VCSEL industry, the market scale has expanded rapidly, and start-up companies have emerged one after another. From 2018 to 2019, the Android camp followed Apple and launched a number of mobile phones with integrated 3D sensing technology, but it did not make 3D face recognition a rigid demand. In 2020, it will be squeezed out of the market share by under-screen fingerprint recognition. In 2020, addressable VCSEL arrays will enter Apple’s new iPad Pro tablet and iPhone 12 Pro series smartphones for the first time, becoming the light source of consumer lidar. This also prompted the Android camp to deploy direct time-of-flight (dToF) technology and actively prepare for augmented reality (AR) applications.
Looking forward , under the intelligent demand of the two major terminal products of mobile phones and automobiles, the VCSEL market will continue to maintain a momentum of rapid growth. We expect that the 3D camera on the rear of the Android smartphone, as well as the laser radar outside the car and the monitoring of the people inside the car (such as the driver monitoring system) will accelerate the progress.