The fabrication of planar, proton implanted vertical-cavity lasers (VC
SELs) with low threshold voltages of 1.8V and high wallplug efficienci
es of 17.6% for top surface emission is reported. The maximum output p
ower of 25 mu m devices is 12.5mW. Layer structures containing simple
single-step graded AlGaAs-GaAs Bragg reflectors were grown by solid so
urce molecular beam epitaxy with beryllium as p-type dopant.