The high reliability and efficiency of high-power conduction cooled annular diode laser stack are critical to the side pump solid-state laser head in a DPSSL system. To obtain the higher reliability and efficiency, a high-power conduction cooled annular diode laser stack packaged by AuSn hard solder has been presented. The CTE-matched wedge-shaped submounts are designed and applied in bonding GaAs-based diode laser bars with the cavity length of 1.5 mm on a conduction cooled annular heatsink. The mechanical structural design and thermal design are conducted to evaluate the capability of the annular packaging. The bar bonding process is optimized to reduce the thermal stress and improve the spectral performances of this package. After optimizing the multiple bar bonding process, a series of 808nm QCW ⪆2000W annular diode laser stacks with a narrow spectral width are achieved, which has the average FWHM and FW90%Energy value of approximately 2.6 nm and approximately 3.6 nm at 65 °C, respectively. Also, the FW90% Energy value at 65 °C is significantly reduced from 8.03 nm to 3.84 nm. Of particular importance is the elimination of the left shoulder of the spectral profile after optimizing the multiple bar bonding process.
During the process of annealing, the warpage of conduction cooled diode laser bars (CSs) packaged with indium solder is studied according to temperature difference along the direction of thickness of CSs. This investigation reveals that the smile of CSs is related to the annealing rate and the thickness of the packaging fixture. In theory, the smile can be eliminated by optimizing the annealing rate and the thickness of the packaging fixture when using two-sided isokinetic annealing method. Compared with the one side annealing, when the thickness of the fixture is more than 15 mm, the smile of CSs still can be well controlled by the two-sided isokinetic annealing. It provides theoretic evidences for eliminating smile during annealing and improving the performances of CSs.
In this study, a high-power diode laser bar assembly is developed with good heat dissipation in long pulse operation mode. The thermal behavior and stress distribution are investigated in order to characterize the cooling capability and reliability. The optimal thermal resistance reaches 0.81K/W for each bar, based on the custom designed cooling plate, which is 0.6K/W lower than conventional coolers. The maximum thermal stress of laser bar is 39.4MPa under the working condition, which is less than half of the stress for previous conventional diode laser. Reliability of the device is improved as the diode laser works in a low stress status with long pulse width mode. The light power of the diode laser achieves 120W/bar with pulse duration of 30ms in 10Hz, and 200W/bar with 10ms, 10Hz, respectively. The diode laser of lifetime test passed 4.5×107 shots under the condition of 30ms, 10Hz@120A.
With the development of laser technology, high power diode lasers have found the increasing various applications in many fields, including industry, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, Lidar and medical systems etc.. The near field non-linearity (Smile) and lasing uniformity of emitters for high power diode laser arrays are critical to high reliable optically coupled modules and laser heads in a cladding system. In order to obtain the lower smile and higher lasing uniformity, two CTEmatched substrates (Copper Tungsten-CuW) are employed to bond a single GaAs-based diode laser array with the cavity length of 2mm on a Micro Channel Cooler (MCC) using Gold-Tin hard solder. This double-CuW MCC-packaged structure is called DMCC which enables a diode laser array bonded on a CuW/MCC/CuW structure with all AuSn solder. Structural optimization has been carried out to reduce the thermal stress and smile for this package. Simulation results indicate that the smile and thermal stress is lowered 0.24μm and 16MPa, respectively. According to the simulation results, single bar DMCC-packaged diode lasers with lower Smile value are fabricated and characterized. The experimental results show that the ratio of Smile (average smile ~0.87μm) ⪅1μm is ~71% and higher ~19% than that of conventional structure (average smile ~1.2μm). Importantly, the quantity ratio of lasing emitters (≥46 emitters) in a diode laser array is significantly raised from ~62% to 85% after the optimization of CuW submount.
High power QCW diode laser stacks have been widely used in pumping applications for years. Different package structures of diode laser stacks are applied for pumping the cylindrical rod crystal, such as modular G-Stack, horizontal, vertical and annular arrays. Annular array is preferred in pumping of QCW mode with low duty cycle and short pulse width, due to the advantage of compact structural size, uniform light beam distribution and convenient electric connection. However, the development of annular diode laser array using hard solder is difficult because of the complex bonding process of diode laser on annular heatsink with conventional bonding fixture. Furthermore the stress and thermal behavior is yet to be well studied on the annular diode laser array. In this work, a sophisticated annular diode laser array was developed using hard solder. Optimized structure and thermal design were conducted to achieve uniform light beam distribution and good heat dissipation. Stress release structure of diode laser stack is applied to reduce the risk of chip crack and deviation of spatial spectrum. The annular diode laser array consists of 44 bars in a ring, with the peak output power of each bar over 500W. The maximum output power of each bar reaches 673 W.
KEYWORDS: Semiconductor lasers, Absorption, Solid state lasers, Temperature metrology, Nd:YAG lasers, Crystals, Resistance, High power lasers, Laser development, Heatsinks
High power diode laser stack is widely used in pumping solid-state laser for years. Normally an integrated temperature control module is required for stabilizing the output power of solid-state laser, as the output power of the solid-state laser highly depends on the emission wavelength and the wavelength shift of diode lasers according to the temperature changes. However the temperature control module is inconvenient for this application, due to its large dimension, high electric power consumption and extra adding a complicated controlling system. Furthermore, it takes dozens of seconds to stabilize the output power when the laser system is turned on. In this work, a compact hard soldered high power conduction cooled diode laser stack with multiple wavelengths is developed for stabilizing the output power of solid-state laser in a certain temperature range. The stack consists of 5 laser bars with the pitch of 0.43mm. The peak output power of each bar in the diode laser stack reaches as much as 557W and the combined lasing wavelength spectrum profile spans 15nm. The solidstate laser, structured with multiple wavelength diode laser stacks, allows the ambient temperature change of 65°C without suddenly degrading the optical performance.
KEYWORDS: Semiconductor lasers, Packaging, High power lasers, Reliability, Copper, Laser bonding, Near field, High power diode lasers, Laser systems engineering
The package structure critically influences the major characteristics of diode laser, such as thermal behavior, output power, wavelength and smile effect. In this work, a novel micro channel cooler (MCC) for stack array laser with good heat dissipation capability and high reliability is presented. Numerical simulations of thermal management with different MCC structure are conducted and analyzed. Based on this new MCC packaging structure, a series of QCW 500W high power laser arrays with hard solder packaging technology has been fabricated. The performances of the laser arrays are characterized. A narrow spectrum of 3.12 nm and an excellent smile value are obtained. The lifetime of the laser array is more than 1.38×109 shots and still ongoing.
KEYWORDS: Semiconductor lasers, High power diode lasers, Laser development, Indium, Resistance, Reliability, High power lasers, Numerical simulations, Gold
The high power diode lasers have been widely used in many fields. In this work, a sophisticated high power and high performance horizontal array of diode laser stacks have been developed and fabricated with high duty cycle using hard solder bonding technology. CTE-matched submount and Gold Tin (AuSn) hard solder are used for bonding the diode laser bar to achieve the performances of anti-thermal fatigue, higher reliability and longer lifetime. This array consists of 30 bars with the expected optical output peak power of 6000W. By means of numerical simulation and analytical results, the diode laser bars are aligned on suitable positions along the water cooled cooler in order to achieve the uniform wavelength with narrow spectrum and accurate central wavelength. The performance of the horizontal array, such as output power, spectrum, thermal resistance, life time, etc., is characterized and analyzed.
Packaging is an important part of high power diode laser (HPLD) development and has become one of the key factors affecting the performance of high power diode lasers. In the package structure of HPLD, the interface layer of die bonding has significant effects on the thermal behavior of high power diode laser packages and most degradations and failures in high power diode laser packages are directly related to the interface layer. In this work, the effects of interface layer on the performance of high power diode laser array were studied numerically by modeling and experimentally. Firstly, numerical simulations using finite element method (FEM) were conducted to analyze the effects of voids in the interface layer on the temperature rise in active region of diode laser array. The correlation between junction temperature rise and voids was analyzed. According to the numerical simulation results, it was found that the local temperature rise of active region originated from the voids in the solder layer will lead to wavelength shift of some emitters. Secondly, the effects of solder interface layer on the spectrum properties of high power diode laser array were studied. It showed that the spectrum shape of diode laser array appeared “right shoulder” or “multi-peaks”, which were related to the voids in the solder interface layer. Finally, “void-free” techniques were developed to minimize the voids in the solder interface layer and achieve high power diode lasers with better optical-electrical performances.
Due to their high electrical-optical conversion efficiency, compact size and long lifetime, high power diode lasers have
found increased applications in many fields. As the improvement of device technology, high power diode laser bars with
output power of tens or hundreds watts have been commercially available. With the increase of high current and output
power, the reliability and lifetime of high power diode laser bars becomes a challenge, especially under harsh working
conditions and hard-pulse operations. The bonding technology is still one of the bottlenecks of the advancement of high
power diode laser bars. Currently, materials used in bonding high power diode laser bars are commonly indium and goldtin
solders. Experimental and field application results indicates that the lifetime and reliability of high power diode laser
bars bonded by gold-tin solder is much better than that bonded by indium solder which is prone to thermal fatigue,
electro-migration and oxidization. In this paper, we review the bonding technologies for high power diode laser bars and
present the advances in bonding technology for single bars, horizontal bar arrays and vertical bar stacks. We will also
present the challenges and issues in bonding technology for high power diode laser bars and discuss some approaches
and strategies in addressing the challenges and issues.
High power diode lasers have increased application in many fields. In this work, a sophisticated high power and high performance conduction cooled diode laser stack has been developed for long pulse duration and high duty cycle using gold-tin (AuSn) bonding technology. The transient thermal behavior and optical simulation of the laser diode stack module are investigated to optimize the laser device structure. CTE-matched submount and AuSn hard solder are used for bonding the laser diode bar to achieve higher reliability and longer lifetime. Guided by the numerical simulation and analytical results, conduction cooled diode laser stack with high power, long pulse duration and high duty cycle is fabricated and characterized. Compared with the conventional indium bonding technology, the new design is a promising approach to obtain improved performance with high reliability and long lifetime.
High power diode lasers have been widely used in many fields. For many applications, a diode laser needs to be robust under on-off power-cycling as well as environmental thermal cycling conditions. To meet the requirements, the conduction cooled single bar CS-packaged diode laser arrays must have high durability to withstand thermal fatigue and long lifetime. In this paper, a complete indium-free bonding technology is presented for packaging high power diode laser arrays. Numerical simulations on the thermal behavior of CS-packaged diode laser array with different packaging structure were conducted and analyzed. Based on the simulation results, the device structure and packaging process of complete indium-free CS-packaged diode laser array were optimized. A series of high power hard solder CS (HCS) diode laser arrays were fabricated and characterized. Under the harsh working condition of 90s on and 30s off, good lifetime was demonstrated on 825nm 60W single bar CS-packaged diode laser with a lifetime test of more than 6100hours achieved so far with less 5% power degradation and less 1.5nm wavelength shift. Additionally, the measurement results indicated that the lower smile of complete indium-free CS-packaged diode laser arrays were achieved by advanced packaging process.
With the improvement of output power, efficiency and reliability, high power semiconductor lasers have been applied in more and more fields. In this paper, a conduction-cooled, high peak output power semiconductor laser array was studied and developed. The structure and operation parameters of G-Stack semiconductor laser array were designed and optimized using finite element method (FEM). A Quasi-continuous-wave (QCW) conduction-cooled G-Stack semiconductor laser array with a narrow spectrum width was fabricated successfully.
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