We report on the development of the latest generation of high power laser diodes at 14xx nm wavelength range suitable for industrial applications such as plastics welding and medical applications including acne treatment, skin rejuvenation and surgery. The paper presents the newest chip generation developed at II-VI Laser Enterprise, increasing the output power and the power conversion efficiency while retaining the reliability of the initial design. At an emission wavelength around 1440 nm we applied the improved design to a variety of assemblies exhibiting maximum power values as high as 7 W for broad-area single emitters. For 1 cm wide bars on conductive coolers and for bars on active micro channel coolers we have obtained 50 W and 72 W in continuous wave (cw) operation respectively. The maximum power measured for a 1 cm bar operated with 50 μs pulse width and 0.01% duty cycle was 184 W, demonstrating the potential of the chip design for optimized cooling. Power conversion efficiency values as high as 50% for a single emitter device and over 40% for mounted bars have been demonstrated, reducing the required power budget to operate the devices. Both active and conductive bar assembly configurations show polarization purity greater than 98%. Life testing has been conducted at 95 A, 50% duty cycle and 0.5 Hz hard pulsed operation for bars which were soldered to conductive copper CS mounts using our hard solder technology. The results after 5500 h, or 10 million “on-off” cycles show stable operation.
We report on the development of high power, 9xx-10xx nm laser diode bars for use in direct diode systems and for solidstate and fibre laser pumping with applications in industrial markets. For 1 cm wide bars on micro channel cooler (MCC) we have achieved a reliable output power of 250 W across the 900 nm – 1060 nm range. At this output power level we have achieved power conversion efficiencies of 65-66 % and 90 % power content slow axis beam divergence of ~6.5°. Results of a 6400 h life test show an average power degradation of 0.6 % per 1000 h at this operating power level. We will also show results of high power bars assembled on the new OCLARO conductive cooler, the BLM. This new cooler has a small footprint of 12.6 mm × 24.8 mm and is designed for lateral or vertical stacking of diodes in multi kilowatt systems but with the benefits associated with a conductive cooler. The thermal properties are shown to be the same as for a standard CS mount. 1 cm wide high fill factor bars and 0.5 cm wide low fill factor half bars assembled on the BLM operate at 63-64 % power conversion efficiency (PCE) with output powers of up to 250 W and 150 W, respectively.
Single-mode-emitting high-power diode laser arrays (SM-HPDLA) are available industrially with more than 50 W
emission power per bar. Based on this platform an expandable prototype solution is realized for fiber coupling of a
stacked array with more than 100 W to an optical fiber with diameter of 200 micron and NA of 0.11. Advanced methods
of controlled assembly of micro-optics by infrared laser-soldering have been developed therefore. We present a compact
and scalable concept with scalability on 2 internal and 2 external factors. Internal factors are the increasing beam quality
and power stability of high-power single-mode-emitting arrays and the improved assembly accuracy for diode bar and
micro-optics. External factors are the interlaced coupling of stacked beam emission from the stacked array and the
further option to use optimized polarisation coupling with several diode laser stacks.
A conductively cooled 970nm laser diode bar primarily designed for quasi continuous wave (qcw) pumping of
miniaturized solid state lasers is presented. The robust chip design and the highly efficient two side cooling setup of the
10x12x5mm3 diode assembly allows output peak power levels as high as 600W at 500A drive current and 1% duty cycle.
The high performance laser diode was employed as pump for a miniaturized, conductively cooled, side pumped Er:YAG
laser system. The laser system, with an overall dimensions of 30x25x17mm3, generates 2.8W average power with M2<5.
We report on laser diode bars with wavelengths ranging from 793 to 1080 nm and optimized for high power and high
temperature operation. For 808 nm bars output power values of 300 W at 300 A drive current and 200 μs pulse length
have been recorded at a cooler temperature of 75°C. Extending our wavelength range to 1080nm we report on bars with
>65% power conversion efficiency in CW operation and more than 500 W output power for a wide range of qCW
modes. Finally, the properties of a 6-bar stack with 3 kW output power at 460 A drive current and 200 μs pulse width
will be discussed.
The attractiveness of bars for industrial applications depends strongly on the reliable high brightness operation. For 9xx bars we report on high filling factor configurations with 200W reliable output power. Our low filling factor devices with output power between 40W and 90W have proven to operate reliably at output power densities of 85mW per 1µm stripe width, showing power wear-out degradation of less than 0.5% per 1000h operation time. For shorter wavelengths we present solutions for 808-880 nm bars. For our 808nm bars we observe power degradation of less than 4% after 8000h hard-pulse life test at 75W output power.
Bars with high and low filling factors serve the different schemes for beam transformation and fiber coupling. We report on highly efficient 8xx bars for operation in excess of 100 W and reliable broad-area single-emitter lasers (BASE) with 90 um aperture being capable to deliver in excess of 10 W from a 105 um core fiber. For 9xx bars we present solutions with power levels per device ranging from 60 W to 300 W corresponding to linear power levels beyond 8.5 W per 100 um stripe width indicating convergence of BAR and BASE devices. Life test results for these devices will be shown and high brightness fiber coupled solutions will be discussed.
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