ev YA fastaxis J I mittr I 7 /v / [ siow axis / .ABSTRACT Fiber-coupling of high-brightness laser diode bars requires shaping and superposition of the images of the individual emitters on the fiber facet. Employment of micro-optical elements together with bulk-optical components enables the design and manufacturing of efficient coupling schemes with small form-factor. In this presentation we describe optical system design, manufacturing of micro-optical elements, system integration and characterization of two coupling schemes: The beam twister approach uses tilted cylindrical mirolens telescopes to rotate the images of the individual emitters by 90° with subsequent beam compression and focusing optics, while a skew ray coupling scheme applies an array of blazed diffractive elements in the pupil plane of a relay optics to superpose the images of the individual emitters. The optics design is based on raytracing procedures, taking into account diffractive effects, which could lower coupling efficiency. Micro-optical components are realized by polymer-on-glass replication of reflow lenses or grating structures manufactured by laser-lithography. System assembly is based on precise glueing with active alignment in the submicrometer range. We realized several optics schemes for coupling of high-power, high-brightness laser diode bars into fibers with 100µm core diameter. The systems are compared with each other with respect to achievable coupling efficiency, adjustment tolerances and pointing stability.