Guenther Traenkle

Mounting of high power laser diodes on boron nitride heat sinks using an optimized Au/Sn metallurgy

High power diode lasers have become more and more important to industrial and medical applications. In contrast to low power applications, long cavity lasers or laser bars are used in this field and mounting quality influences considerably laser performance and life time. In this paper we focus on the solder metallurgy and stress-induced laser behavior after mounting. The laser chips have been bonded fluxless epi-side down on translucent cubic boron nitride (T-cBN) using Au/Sn solder. The laser behavior has been tested with different chip metallizations preserving the eutectic solder composition or forming the Au rich /spl zeta/-phase during reflow. The resulting additional stress in the lasing region has been independently indicated by polarization measurements of the emitted light. A metallization scheme has been developed which forms the highly melting /spl zeta/-phase during soldering within a wide process window. This procedure yields better results then using eutectic Au/Sn which has a higher hardness than the /spl zeta/-phase. Laser diodes up to a cavity length of 2000 /spl mu/m and an aperture of 200 /spl mu/m have successfully been mounted on T-cBN. State of the art laser data, excellent thermal stability, high yield and reliability have been obtained.

Design and realization of high-power DFB lasers

The development of high-power GaAs-based ridge wave guide distributed feedback lasers is described. The lasers emit between 760 nm and 980 nm either in TM or TE polarization. Over a large current range, the lasers exhibit stable operation in a single transversal and longitudinal mode. A maximum continuous-wave output power of about 400 mW, a spectral linewidth below 1 MHz and a side mode suppression ratio greater than 50 dB have been demonstrated at room temperature. The distributed feedback is provided by first or second order gratings, formed in an InGaP/GaAsP/InGaP multilayer structure embedded into the p-AlGaAs cladding layer. Applications of such wavelength stabilized devices in non-linear frequency conversion, spectroscopy and for excitation of atomic transitions are discussed.

3-W high-brightness tapered diode lasers at 735 nm based on tensile-strained GaAsP QWs

Tensile strained GaAsP quantum wells embedded in AlGaAs waveguide structures are used to realize high power, high brightness short wavelength tapered laser diodes. At 735nm these laser diodes show up to 3W nearly diffraction limited output power with a wall plug efficiency of about 40%. Single spectral mode behavior is observed at output power levels up to 1W. From aging test a high realiability with lifetime exceeding 5000 can be derived comparable to results obtained from broad area laser diodes with the same aperture width. There are only small changes of the beam quality during aging. In conclusion it is shown that well designed tapered laser are a step forward to high efficiency, diffraction limited light soruces in the Watt-range which can be easily fabricated in high volumes.

Diode lasers with Al-free quantum wells embedded in LOC AlGaAs waveguides between 715 nm and 840 nm

In this paper, we present results on diode lasers in the wavelength range between 715 nm and 840 nm with Al-free QWs which are embedded in a high-quality AlGaAs LOC broadened waveguide structure with low optical loss and a small vertical far field divergence. The laser structures were grown by LP- MOVPE. We studied tensile-strained GaAsP-QWs as well as compressively strained InGaAsP-QWs with strain compensating barriers. For lasers with GaAsP QWs, the lowest transparency current densities of about 130 A/cm2 were obtained in the wavelength range between 750 nm and 800 nm. Very low transparency current densities were achieved with InGaAsP-QWs at wavelengths above 800 nm. At 810 nm, high output powers (100 micrometer aperture) of about 7 W was achieved with both types of QWs from devices mounted epi up. However, with respect to high temperature operation and reliability tensile- strained GaAsP QWs seem to be the better choice, especially for the wavelength range below 760 nm.

Low-loss smile-insensitive external frequency-stabilization of high power diode lasers enabled by vertical designs with extremely low divergence angle and high efficiency

Broad area lasers with narrow spectra are required for many pumping applications and for wavelength beam combination. Although monolithically stabilized lasers show high performance, some applications can only be addressed with external frequency stabilization, for example when very narrow spectra are required. When conventional diode lasers with vertical far field angle, ΘV 95% ~ 45° (95% power) are stabilized using volume holographic gratings (VHGs), optical losses are introduced, limiting both efficiency and reliable output power, with the presence of any bar smile compounding the challenge. Diode lasers with designs optimized for extremely low vertical divergence (ELOD lasers) directly address these challenges. The vertical far field angle in conventional laser designs is limited by the waveguiding of the active region itself. In ELOD designs, quantum barriers are used that have low refractive index, enabling the influence of the active region to be suppressed, leading to narrow far field operation from thin vertical structures, for minimal electrical resistance and maximum power conversion efficiency. We review the design process, and show that 975 nm diode lasers with 90 μm stripes that use ELOD designs operate with ΘV 95% = 26° and reach 58% power conversion efficiency at a CW output power of 10 W. We demonstrate directly that VHG stabilized ELOD lasers have significantly lower loss and larger operation windows than conventional lasers in the collimated feedback regimes, even in the presence of significant (≥ 1 μm) bar smile. We also discuss the potential influence of ELOD designs on reliable output power and options for further performance improvement.

Conductively Cooled 1 kW—QCW Diode Laser Stacks Enabling Simple Fiber Coupling

A new mini-bar design densely packed with 13 emitters in a 1.6 mm aperture has been developed. These mini-bars deliver >200 W output. With a very low divergence of 95% power enclosed in 25° they are suitable for fast axis collimation (FAC) lenses with large working distance. The mini-bars are mounted on compact CuW carriers, which are further integrated into a custom stack assembly where they are conductively cooled from both sides. This completely AuSn soldered stack consists of only coefficient of thermal expansion matched materials and was 100 times temperature cycled from -40°C to 85°C, without any change in the PUI characteristic, the spectrum and the far field. The beam propagation factor M 2 of a 12-layer stack is ¿130 in the vertical direction (after FAC) and ¿210 in the lateral direction. Thus, the stack can be coupled to a 1.2 mm multi-mode fiber (M 2 = 260) with a coupling efficiency of 90% using only low-cost lenses.

High-power ridge-wavequide broad-area lasers with a DFB resonator in the wavelength range 760- to 790-nm

Experimental investigations on RW and BA DFB lasers emitting in the wavelength range between 760 and 790 nm are presented. The maximum output powers are 300 mW and 2.4 W for the RW and BA devices, respectively. The optical spectra of the RW DFB lasers show single mode emission with a side-mode suppression ratio of about 50 dB. The profile of the lateral far field reveals stable lasing of the fundamental lateral mode without any beam steering up to 250 mW power. The spectral linewidth of the RW devices is < 2 MHz and sufficiently small for spectroscopic applications (e.g. D2 line of rubidium vapor). The BA devices have a full l/e2 width of the spectrum of 0.08 nm at 0.5 W and 0.16 nm at 2 W.

Mounting of laser bars on copper heat sinks using Au/Sn solder and CuW submounts

GaAs high power diode laser bars were mounted on CuW submounts using an optimized Au(80)Sn(20) solder. During soldering the dissolution of an additional Au layer placed on the die caused the growth of the gold rich /spl zeta/-phase in the solder and thus an isothermal solidification. The laser bars on CuW submounts were mounted on passively cooled Cu heat sinks using a Pb(37)Sn(63) solder. After mounting, the degradation of 800 nm and 960 nm laser bars operated at 30 W and 45 W, respectively, was examined. Degradation rates less than 10/sup -5/ h/sup -1/ have been obtained. Measurements of stress distribution and failure analysis after aging have been performed.

Al-free 950-nm BA diode lasers with high efficiency and reliability at 50° C ambient temperature

We report device properties and results of lifetime tests for Al-free InGaAs/InGaAsP/InGaP broad-area (BA) laser diodes, emitting at 950 nm. The epitaxial layers were grown by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). The mounted diode lasers have a high wallplug efficiency around 60%, for a resonator length of 2 mm, and about 50% for 4 mm long devices due to low threshold current densities of jth equals 110 . . . 140 A/cm2, high slope efficiencies of 75% and the typical low series resistance of the Al-free material. The lasers were mounted on copper heatsinks, episide-down as well as episide- up. Lifetime tests were performed with a facet load of 15 mW/micrometers at temperatures between 25 degrees Celsius and 70 degrees Celsius and with a facet load of 20 mW/micrometers at 25 degrees Celsius. All diodes survived 3000 h with degradation rates lower than 6 X 10-5h-1 at 50 degrees Celsius and 1 X 10-4h-1 at 70 degrees Celsius as well as 2000 h with a low degradation rates of 2 X 10-5h-1 at 20 mW/micrometer. As far we know, the results belong to the best ones reported until now for Al-free BA laser diodes.

Continuous-wave vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with emission wavelengths near 650 nm

Red VCSELs for emission wavelengths near 650nm find applications in emerging technologies such as plastic-fiber-based data communication. However, these devices are challenging due to low band offsets and high electrical and thermal resistivity of especially the p-DBR. The paper presents the optimization of p-DBR and QW design for the reduction of the series resistance and the threshold current density. VCSEL structures were grown using MOVPE and processed to air-post mesas. The resistance of the p:DBR mirrors was optimized using different dopants and interfaces. By changing from Zn doping and abrupt interfaces to the dopant C and introducing graded interfaces the differential resistance decreased. Due to a relative shift across the wafer between the DBR stop-band and gain peak wavelength defined by the MQW active region, devices are available with lasing wavelengths between 638nm and 662nm in pulsed-mode operation. Threshold current densities of 3.6kA/cm2 at 650nm are measured. For improving device parameters a current aperture was processed by selective wet oxidation of AlxGa1-xAs with varying x. Cw laser operation is achieved for wavelengths between 644nm and 657nm at 10°C ambient temperature. With threshold currents under 4mA maximum cw output powers of 160µW are obtained at wavelengths of 657nm and 650 nm.