Aiming at the epitaxial structure of the high-power 885nm laser diodes, the factors limiting the further increase of the output power and the power conversion efficiency were investigated. According to the analysis, the epitaxial structure of the laser diodes was optimized, and the influence of the waveguide layer thickness on the carrier absorption loss and the series resistance was theoretically simulated. The results showed that the asymmetric waveguide structure with the thickness ratio of the N-side and the P-side of 6:4 can reduce the carrier absorption loss to the greatest extent. Based on the simulation results, the 885nm laser bars with the optimized epitaxial structure were fabricated and tested under the ambient temperature of 25℃ in a quasi-continuous wave mode of 250μs and 200Hz. The slope efficiency reaches 1.26W/A, while the series resistance is only 1.2mΩ. The power of 277.6W is achieved at 250A injection current and the maximum power conversion efficiency exceeds 64%.
KEYWORDS: Semiconductor lasers, Resistance, High power lasers, Laser systems engineering, Structural design, Diode pumped solid state lasers, Solid state lasers, Laser welding, Lithium, Cladding
High-power GaAs-based semiconductor lasers are the most efficient source of energy for converting electrical into optical power. 940nm diode lasers are used directly or as pump sources for Yb:YAG solid-state lasers, and are widely used in laser cladding and other fields. Improving electro-optic conversion efficiency and reliable output power are urgent requirements for current research hotspots and industrial laser systems. In this paper, we use an asymmetric epitaxial structure of InGaAs/AlGaAs, which reduces the optical loss and resistance, and adopt better cavity surface technology to present 940nm 1-cm quasi-continuous micro-channel cooling (MCC) laser bars. The lasers are tested under a high duty cycle of 9.6% (600us,160Hz) at 25°C with output power of 660.05W, electro-optic conversion efficiency of 64.71% at 600A and slope efficiency of 1.16 W/A. The peak efficiency reaches 72.4%. The increased efficiency results from a lower threshold current and a lower series resistance. Furthermore, the output power of 1025W (1000A) has been confirmed at a duty cycle of 4% (400us,100Hz).
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.
A new beam-shaping technique is proposed to improve the beam quality of a high-power diode laser area light source. It consists of two staggered prism arrays and a reflector array, which can cut the slow axis beam twice and rearrange the divided beams in fast axis to make the beam quality of both axes approximately equal. Furthermore, the beam transformation and compression can be carried out simultaneously, and the assembly error of this technique induced by the machining accuracy of prism’s dimensions also can be greatly decreased. By this technique, a fiber-coupled system for one three-bar laser diode stack is designed and characterized. The experimental results demonstrate that the laser beams could be transformed into the required distribution with ∼93.4% reshaped efficiency and coupled into a 400 μm/0.22 NA fiber, which are consistent with the theory.
Laser cladding has become a useful tool in materials processing for improving the surface properties of the substrate
materials, and has been widely used in industry in recent years. In this paper, we study the 3000W CW laser cladding
system based on the high power diode lasers. The beam control method is proposed to reduce the collimated beam
pointing errors caused during the packaging of the laser stack. At the input current of 84A, the output power and the
optical coupling efficiency of this laser cladding system are 3738W and 93.7%, respectively, and at work face the beam
spot size is 2.5mm*7.9mm with symmetry intensity distribution. The laser cladding system is also used in cladding the
nickel powder onto the iron substrate and the nickel powder can be clothed onto steel plate uniformly.
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