Clemens Vierheilig

Beyond blue pico laser: development of high power blue and low power direct green

There is a big need on R&D concerning visible lasers for projection applications. The pico-size mobile projection on the one hand awaits the direct green lasers with sufficiently long lifetimes at optical powers above 50mW. In this paper we demonstrate R&D-samples emitting at 519nm with lifetimes up to 10.000 hours. The business projection on the other hand requires high power operation and already uses blue lasers and phosphor conversion, but there is a strong demand for higher power levels. We investigate the power limits of R&D laser structures. In continuous wave operation, the power is limited by thermal roll-over. With an excellent power conversion efficiency of up to 29% the thermal roll-over is as high as 2.5W for a single emitter in TO56 can. We do not observe significant leakage at high currents. Driven in short pulse operation to prevent the laser from self heating, linear laser characteristics of optical power versus electrical current are observed up to almost 8W of optical power.

Recent advances in c-plane GaN visible lasers

Blue and green InGaN-based R&D laser structures on c-plane GaN substrates are investigated. We analyzed carrier injection efficiencies as well as internal quantum efficiencies up to laser threshold. The injection efficiency of the blue laser structure is measured to be 78%. The internal quantum efficiency of spontaneous emission reaches 50% at 30A/cm2 and 32% at laser threshold. For the green laser structure we found an injection efficiency of 71%, a maximum of internal efficiency of 36% and, at laser threshold. a value of 28%. Both, recombination on defects as well as Auger effect are identified as relevant loss processes up to the laser threshold. An improved 515nm R&D single mode laser in TO56 can is presented. The optical output power of the green single mode laser reaches 250mW in continuous wave operation underneath thermal roll-over. Wall plug efficiency is as high as 9%. In the next step we investigate high power multimode lasers. The new power green R&D laser reaches maximum power of 1.25W at thermal roll-over. The currentoutput characteristic is nearly linear up to 0.9A and 0.6W. At higher currents thermal bending is observed. We measured a maximum wall plug efficiency of the green multimode laser of 13%. The power blue R&D laser in TO90 metal can reaches 5.5W prior to roll-over having the wall plug efficiency of 32% at 3.5W.

Power blue and green laser diodes and their applications

InGaN based green laser diodes with output powers up to 50mW are now well established for variety of applications ranging from leveling to special lighting effects and mobile projection of 12lm brightness. In future the highest market potential for visible single mode profile lasers might be laser projection of 20lm. Therefore direct green single-mode laser diodes with higher power are required. We found that self heating was the limiting factor for higher current operation. We present power-current characteristics of improved R and D samples with up to 200mW in cw-operation. An optical output power of 100mW is reached at 215mA, a current level which is suitable for long term operation. Blue InGaN laser diodes are also the ideal source for phosphor based generation of green light sources of high luminance. We present a light engine based on LARP (Laser Activated Remote Phosphor) which can be used in business projectors of several thousand lumens on screen. We discuss the advantages of a laser based systems in comparison with LED light engines. LARP requires highly efficient blue power laser diodes with output power above 1W. Future market penetration of LARP will require lower costs. Therefore we studied new designs for higher powers levels. R and D chips with power-current characteristics up to 4W in continuous wave operation on C-mount at 25°C are presented.

InGaN power laser chips in a novel 50W multi-die package

In this paper we report recent developments on high power blue laser chips. Reduction of internal losses as well as optimized thermal management had been essential to increase optical output power. R and D samples with average performance of 3W optical output at junction temperatures of 130°C are demonstrated. The chips are suitable for use in a novel multi chip housing: For the first time up to 20 blue laser chips have been packaged into one compact housing resulting in the first InGaN laser device with optical output > 50W. The highly integrated package offers a unique small size. The outer dimensions of the package are 25.5mm x 35mm with an emitting surface of 16mm x 16.5mm. Therefore the complexity of optical alignment is dramatically reduced and only a single sheet multi lens array is required for beam collimation. Besides the unique technical performance the multi-die package offers significantly lower assembly costs because of the reduced complexity and assembly time. The butterfly package contains 4 bars with up to 5 multimode laser chips in series connection on each bar operating at 2.3A. The typical module wavelength is 450nm +/- 10nm. At a case temperature of 50°C the R and D samples achieve efficiencies of typ. 30% and an optical output power of 50W corresponding to an electrical power consumption of ~165W. This new technology can be used for high performance light engines of high brightness projectors.

Blue and green nitride based laser diodes for projection

Summary form only given. Two fields for laser projection have attended big interest since several years due to the potential of high volume markets. One is the mobile projection; ideally a projection unit embedded in a mobile phone. For customer acceptance a reasonable price and high brightness of such a device are crucial. Mobile pico projectors need a brightness of 15 to 20 lumens. While red and blue laser with sufficient output power are available, direct green single mode laser with the necessary power are still under development. We report R&D results of single mode green laser with output power up to 200mW. This demonstrates that long term operation of green laser at 80mW to 100mW output power is realistic. The second field is the business projection with brightness up to several thousands of lumens. The concept here is to use blue high power laser as blue light source and also for the green light by conversion technology. The challenge is to reduce the cost of the light engine which is strongly dominated by the output power of the laser. We report R&D results of blue high power laser with an output power up to 3 watt.