Marc Philippens

Comparative performance studies of indium and gold-tin packaged diode laser bars

This paper is mainly dedicated to a short-time scale reliability study of different packages applied to the same type of laser diode bars: indium and gold-tin packaged laser bars are operated in cw hard-pulse mode with increasing currents until their destruction. The destruction currents serve as guide values for long-time aging tests that should be performed at lower currents. Gold-tin packaged diode lasers turn out to have clearly higher destruction currents in hard-pulse mode. This result is underlined by long-time aging tests at appropriate currents.

More brilliance from high-power laser diodes

The introduction of high power diode laser systems in industry has boosted the interest in these devices for a wide range of applications. Besides printing and soldering, cutting and deep penetration welding are becoming more important. An overview about the developments, an update on todays high power laser activities and an outlook will be given, what characteristics laser bars will have to fulfil in the near future. For higher brightness, laser bars with lower fill factors, monolithic integrated laser junctions and tapered laser designs were investigated. High power diode laser (HPDL) bars with 25% - 50% fill factor were operated between 40 W and 80 W and lifetimes up to 100 000 hours could be extrapolated. Tapered laser bars with 50W output power and high wall plug efficiencies were developed. Wavelength multiplexing and polarisation coupling were used in order to reach multi-kilo-Watt diode laser emission. Examples for applications will be given.

High-power diode lasers: technology and application in Europe

The application field of high power semiconductor lasers is growing rapidly and covers e.g. solid state laser pumping, metal and plastic welding, hard and soft soldering, suface treatment and others. Preferably those applications are attractive, which do not require extremely high beam quality. We have investigated high power diode-laser bars from 808 nm to 980 nm. The scope of this presentation is on focusability and beam quality. For better beam shaping structures with reduced fill factor of 25% to 30% were developed. They were operated in continuous wave operation at power levels of up to 55 W. Tests indicate extrapolated lifetimes of more than 100,000 hours at 40 W at 980 nm cw and about 10,000 hours at 45 W - 50 W at 940 nm and 808 nm. Monolithically stacked NonostacksR were investigated. Operation up to 100°C with excellent lifetimes could be demonstrated. New concepts and applications for low mode number high power diode lasers like tapered laser bars are presented. Examples for various current areas of interest in European research facilities will be given.

High-brightness highly reliable InGaAlAs/GaAs laser bars with reduced fill factor and 60% efficiency

We have investigated high-power diode laser bars from 808 nm to 980 nm. The presentation is focussed upon the development of suitable laser bars for improved beam quality at increased output power. For better beam shaping structures with reduced fill factor of 30% were developed. They were operated in continuous wave mode at power levels of up to 60W. Moreover industrial applications require lifetimes of more than 10,000 hours. We present data yielding an extrapolated lifetime of up to 100,000 hours at 40W with 60% wall-plug efficiency at 980nm cw.

Highly reliable and efficient laser bars and cost efficient packaging

High power diode lasers convince by their very efficient conversion of electrical into optical energy. Besides high efficiencies and record absolute power levels, reliability in all possible operation modes and cost become increasingly important. We present diode laser bars in the 940nm range with wall plug efficiencies of about 65% at an emission power of 100W and with excellent reliability. The test had been performed on a stack with 5 bars at an output power of 100W per 1cm bar and after about 4000hrs test time, lifetimes of more than 40 000hour were estimated. The efficiency of these bars was at the beginning and at the end of this test about 65%. Operation modes between cw operation and q-cw (200μsec pulses) were evaluated and it will be shown, that pulses in the range of 1Hz are the hardest conditions, which can cause catastrophic failures. Using submounts with matched thermal expansion coefficient, this failure was prevented and lifetimes similar to cw-operation were reached. In order to reduce costs of laser power, we developed a laser package that offers high power at good reliability and provides a collimated beam for about 5

Monolithically stacked high-power diode laser bars in quasi-continuous-wave operation exceeding 500 W

/W, as a cost target in mass production conditions. This was achieved by using packaging concepts that were developed for high power semiconductor devices. These results will further enhance the applicability of diode lasers in industrial application.

Current status of high-power diode laser bars for pump and direct applications

In this paper we report on quasi-continuous-wave (q-cw) operation of monolithically stacked laser diode bars. Monolithically stacked laser diode bars consist of more than one laser diode grown on top of each other. In between every two laser diodes a tunnel junction is included to ensure proper current injection to all lasers. In comparison to a standard laser operated at the same optical power level, the monolithic laser stack has a significantly reduced optical mirror load. Furthermore the required current is reduced drastically, which has positive consequences on both laser lifetime and diode driver costs. If one otherwise compares a monolithic integrated laser bar stack with a setup of three separate standard laser bars, the monolithic laser bar stack is characterized by very low costs per watt as well as high brilliance. By using monolithically stacked laser diode bars we were able to exceed an optical power of 500 W in q-cw mode and are moving to even higher output power levels. Typical wavelengths are in the range between 800 and 1000 nm.

Light-Emitting Semiconductor Component Comprising a Protective Diode

In this paper, the current status of high-power diode laser bars for pump and direct applications are proposed. The Nd:YAG with absorption lines at 808 nm and the Yb:YAG with absorption lines at 940 nm are actually most important for high power diode laser pump applications. Compared to flash lamp pumped solid state lasers, diode pumped systems have advantages in efficiency, lifetime and beam quality. Beside the current status of industrial bar products, top values from research labs in important laser characteristics are quite above the actual level. Today, for some material processing applications, the tapered laser structure seems to be most favourable, concerning beam quality and reproducible production.