The industrial laser market has rapidly expanded over the past decade with the emergence of advanced high brightness solid state laser technology. Thin disk laser systems are important examples of these powerful tools enabling a range of high-end CW materials processing applications such as 2D sheet metal cutting and remote welding applications, and the rising demand for a range of demanding high-energy pulsed applications of high average power. Commercial applications with power in the range of 8 kW- 20 kW can be cost competitive using disk lasers in moderate volumes compared to more commoditized solid-state laser sources such as fiber lasers.
Reduction in the cost structure of disk laser pump sources requires an increase in brightness, efficiency and power of diode lasers bars within. Here we show the development of thin disk laser pump modules from an original common cooler platform with ~180 W per laser bar to recently developed individually cooled laser bars each operating continuously over 300 W. We demonstrate pump modules utilizing these bars with total power of up to 2.4 kW at 940 nm. Cooling in such laser modules is provided by mounting laser bars on isolated laser coolers (ILASCO). The ILASCO cooler comprises a multi-layer structure of aluminum nitride and copper sheets that are designed to decouple the direct current path from the water cooling eliminate electro-corrosion and to maximize heat dissipation and match the thermal expansion of the diode laser bar.
We demonstrate advances in the single quantum well InGaAs/AlGaAs laser epitaxy design and chip layout that enables high power operation at operating temperatures up to 80°C. We show increase in peak electro-optic efficiencies from 55% to over 60% at this temperature. With the application of advanced facet passivation technology, we demonstrate >35 khr reliable operation in the application through accelerated aging tests.
The advance of high power semiconductor diode laser technology is driven by the rapidly growing industrial laser market, with such high power solid state laser systems requiring ever more reliable diode sources with higher brightness and efficiency at lower cost. In this paper we report simulation and experimental data demonstrating most recent progress in high brightness semiconductor laser bars for industrial applications. The advancements are in three principle areas: vertical laser chip epitaxy design, lateral laser chip current injection control, and chip cooling technology. With such improvements, we demonstrate disk laser pump laser bars with output power over 250W with 60% efficiency at the operating current. Ion implantation was investigated for improved current confinement. Initial lifetime tests show excellent reliability. For direct diode applications <1 um smile and >96% polarization are additional requirements. Double sided cooling deploying hard solder and optimized laser design enable single emitter performance also for high fill factor bars and allow further power scaling to more than 350W with 65% peak efficiency with less than 8 degrees slow axis divergence and high polarization.
A novel, 9XX nm fiber-coupled module using arrays of highly reliable laser diode bars has been developed. The module is capable of multi-kW output power in a beam parameter product of 80 mm-mrad. The module incorporates a hard-soldered, isolated stack package compatible with tap-water cooling. Using extensive, accelerated multi-cell life-testing, with more than ten million device hours of test, we have demonstrated a MTTF for emitters of >500,000 hrs. In addition we have qualified the module in hard-pulse on-off cycling and stringent environmental tests. Finally we have demonstrated promising results for a next generation 9xx nm chip design currently in applications and qualification testing
The scalability of semiconductor diode lasers to multi-kilowatt power levels has increasing importance in direct diode material processing applications. These applications require hard-pulse on-off cycling capability and high brightness achieved using low fill-factor (FF) bars with a tight vertical pitch. Coherent uses 20%FF bars operated at <60W/bar packaged on water-cooled packages with a 1.65mm vertical pitch in the Highlight D-series, which achieves <8kW of power in a < 1mm x 8mm beam line at a working distance of ~ 280mm. We compare thermal measurement results to thermal fluid flow simulations to show the emitters are cooled to low junction temperatures with minimal thermal crosstalk, similar to single emitter packaging. Good thermal performance allows for scaling to operation at higher power and brightness. We present accelerated life-testing results in both CW and hard-pulse on-off cycling conditions.
All-optical header recognition using a tree-structure is reported for a three-bit address. Each bit of a three bit header is
read using an optical Sagnac AND gate and the outcome is used to control each level of the three level tree-structure
switch. Traffic at 10 Gb/s (payload) is directed through the switch and each possible address outcome is validated.
Reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (RSOAs) are used as the 1 x 2 space switch at each node of the tree-structure
switch. A noise propagation analysis that considers mostly amplified spontaneous emission noise is presented. This
analysis takes into account the saturation power of the SOAs, their noise figure, the gain of each SOA and the coupled
optical power. It is concluded that large switches based on semiconductor optical amplifiers can be constructed using
cascaded SOAs.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.