Markus Arzberger

Scaling brilliance of high power laser diodes

New direct diode laser systems and fiber lasers require brilliant fiber coupled laser diodes for efficient operation. In the German funded project HEMILAS different laser bar designs are investigated with tailored beam parameter products adapted for efficient fiber coupling. In this paper we demonstrate results on 9xx and 1020nm bars suitable for coupling into 200μm fibers. With special facet technology and optimised epitaxial structure COD-free laser bars were fabricated with maximum efficiency above 66%. For short bars consisting of five 100μm wide emitters 75W CW maximum output power was reached. In QCW-mode up to 140W are demonstrated. The 10% fill factor bars with 4mm cavity are mounted with hard solder. Lifetime tests in long pulse mode with 35W output power exceed 5000 hours of testing without degradation or spontaneous failures. Slow axis divergence stays below 7° up to power levels of 40W and is suitable for simple fiber coupling into 200μm NA 0.22 fibers with SAC and FAC lenses. For fiber coupling based on beam rearrangement with step mirrors, bars with higher fill factor of 50% were fabricated and tested. The 4mm cavity short bars reach efficiencies above 60%. Lifetime tests at accelerated powers were performed. Finally fiber coupling results with output powers of up to 2.4 kW and beam quality of 30 mm mrad are demonstrated.

High-power IR laser in SMT package

Laser dies in an optical power range of 1-3 Watts are widely assembled in popular TO- packages. TO-packages suffer from high thermal resistance and limited output power. Bad thermal contact between circuit boards and TO-devices can cause overheating of laser chips, significantly reducing the operating life time. We developed a compact high heat-load SMT package for an optical power up to 7 Watts in CW operation with good life time results. The new package for high power laser chips combines highly efficient heat dissipation with Surface-mount technology. A Direct-Bonded-Copper (DBC) substrate acts as a base plate for the laser chip and heat sink. The attached frame is used for electrical contacting and acts as beam reflector where the laser light is reflected at a 45° mirror. In the application the DBC base plate of the SMT-Laser is directly soldered to a Metal-Core-PCB by reflow soldering. The overall thermal resistance from laser chip to the bottom of a MC-PCB was measured as low as 2.5 K/W. The device placement process can be operated by modern high-speed mounting equipment. The direct link between device and MC-PCB allows CW laser operation up to 6-7 watts at wavelengths of 808nm to 940nm without facing any overheating symptom like thermal roll over. The device is suitable for CW and QCW operation. In pulsed operation short rise and fall times of <2ns have been demonstrated. New application fields like infrared illumination for sensing purposes in the automotive industry and 3D imaging systems could be opened by this new technology.