High power diode lasers

Abstract

High power laser diodes are used in a wide range of applications including solid-state laser and amplifier pumping, thermal printing, and materials processing. This imposes a number of demands on the laser diode's inherent high brightness, high reliability of a number of discrete elements, and high yield over a large surface area. The reliable CW power of various commercially available laser diode is compared with etendue (two dimensional product width times beam divergence). Results indicate constant brightness and a trend toward higher reliable brightness at lower chip aperture width. Ensemble reliability without redundancy is achieved through multi-temperature cell testing with an activation energy of 0.4 eV.