Hardening Principles and Characterization of an Optocoupler Including a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser

This paper reports the hardening principles and the first characterization of an optocoupler structure that uses a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) as a light emitter. Current Transfer Ratio (CTR) measurements carried out before and after proton irradiations show that this architecture improves the radiation hardness by a factor of 10 or more above the present state-of-the-art hardened optocouplers.