The impact of LOC structures on 670-nm (Al)GaInP high-power lasers

Abstract

We investigate the potential of large optical cavity (LOC)-laser structures for AlGaInP high-power lasers. For that we study large series of broad area lasers with varying waveguide widths to obtain statistically relevant data. We study in detail I/sub th/, /spl alpha//sub i/, /spl eta//sub i/, and P/sub max/, and analyze above-threshold behavior including temperature stability and leakage current. We got as expected for LOC structures minimal /spl alpha//sub i//spl les/1 cm/sup -1/ resulting in /spl eta//sup d/=1.1 W/A for 64/spl times/2000 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ uncoated devices. We obtain total output powers /spl ges/3.2 W (qCW) and /spl ges/1.5 W (CW) at 20/spl deg/C

Threshold and power of pulsed red-emitting diode lasers with a bulk active layer near p-cladding under high-temperature operation

“…At first sight, designs with the larger value of da appear to offer superior performance at all operating conditions. Unfortunately, in practice it is not always possible to utilise their advantage because AlGaInP lasers considered here are well known to suffer significantly from Catastrophic Optical Degradation (COD) (see for example [17,18] and references therein). This is caused by extreme localised heating of material near the facets, which is determined by the internal power density (light intensity) at the facet and presents a significant threat even under quasi-CW operation.…”

“…The numerical values for the exact material and structure parameters used here are not available in the literature, so in the first approximation we use the value of the CW internal power density of pCOD=3.5 mW/m 2 given in [17] for a typical red-emitting laser. The total threshold output power of COD was then calculated as in, e.g., [18] PCOD=(1-RAR)/(1+RAR) pCODdw/Г for CW operation and then multiplied by a corresponding correction factor (1.5 for the pulse duration of 10 ns and 2.7, following the inverse square root law, for 3 ns) to estimate the COD threshold for pulsed operation [20]. The corresponding values are shown on the curves in Fig.…”

Optimization of Barrier Structure for Strain-Compensated Multiple-Quantum-Well AlGaInP Laser Diodes

“…1) Therefore, to increase recording speed, the output power from the AlGaInP LDs needs to be enhanced. Several methods have been proposed to improve output power, including the reduction in optical field confinement in the epitaxial growth direction by reducing quantum well (QW) thickness 2,3) or utilizing a large optical cavity design, 4,5) and the prevention of facet absorption by employing windowmirror structures. 6,7) More recently, several efforts have been made to reduce threshold current or operation current to further improve output power.…”

Novel design for high-power single-lateral-mode lasers

“…This type of laser is being used in materials processing, medical treatment, and most commonly, as pumps for erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs). In recent years, laser designs incorporating a large optical cavity (LOC), first proposed by [1] and successfully demonstrated by [2], have proven to be very effective for obtaining high-power operation in both broad area [3], [4] and narrow stripe [5] lasers. The LOC design sacrifices low threshold operation in order to attain higher slope efficiencies and higher catastrophic optical mirror damage (COMD) levels.…”