High-power, high-efficiency 808 nm laser diode array

Abstract

High-power, high-efficiency 808 nm laser diode arrays for pumping solid-state lasers have been widely used in industrial, scientific, medical and biological applications. The tendency of development of 808 nm laser diode pumping with high power, high efficiency and long lifetime is well-known. Diode-pumped solid-state system with high-efficiency laser diode array has many advantages such as compact volume, lower weight and energy saving. Currently, commercial 808 nm diode laser arrays with lower power conversion efficiency of about 50%-55%, due to the optical absorption losses for GaAs-based epitaxial materials, have been reported. In order to reduce series resistance and thermal resistance, heavily doped p-type waveguide and cladding layers are employed. However, the absorption loss on the free carriers in heavily doped p-type layers is dominant, leading to a lower power conversion efficiency. In order to achieve a high efficiency, the following requirements must be considered: improving the internal quantum efficiency by reducing the carrier leakage and increasing the electron injection efficiency; minimizing the voltage drop by optimizing the operating voltage; reducing the series resistance and thermal resistance of device; minimizing the internal loss including free-carrier absorption loss and scattering loss by designing optimized waveguide and cladding structure. In this paper, optimizing the epitaxial structure and fabricating technologies are demonstrated to achieve the high efficiency and high power. The asymmetric broad waveguide epitaxial structure with lower absorption loss in p-type waveguide and cladding layer is designed in order to achieve the above goals. The high-efficiency epitaxial structure is optimized including the thickness, doping and composition for each layer structure. The strained quantum well diode laser with lower transparency current and higher differential is of benefit to achieving the high power. A novel asymmetric broad waveguide structure is designed by optimizing the waveguide thickness and component of p-waveguide so as to reduce carrier absorption loss, the optical absorption loss in this epitaxial structure is achieved to be as low as 0.63 cm-1. The wafer is grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition on an n-GaAs substrate. The optimized growth conditions and substrates orientation are extensively studied to improve the crystal quality and reduce the internal loss and defects. The wafer is processed using standard procedures. For the fabricated 1-cm laser diode array mounted on P-side down on copper microchannel cooled heatsink, the device shows an output power of 150 W under an operating current of 135 A with an emitting wavelength of 809 nm, an operating voltage of 1.76 V, a slope efficiency of as high as 1.25 W/A, and maximum power conversion efficiency of as high as 65.5%, which is the highest level of 808 nm diode laser array with an output power of 150 W.