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Tuesdav Afternoon

OFC '98 Technical Digest

18

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Pump power = 18OmW
Pump power wavelength 9 8 0 m

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10

w9.

10.6 W continuous wave power from InGaAs/AIGaAs

( 9 1 5 nm) laser diodes

X. He, S. Srinivasan, M. Ung, R. Patel, Opt0 Power

Corporation, 3321 E. Global Loop, Tucson, Arizona 85706

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Pout (dBm)
TuH5 Fig. 3.

Saturation behavior of the long amplifier.

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3:30pm

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Pout (dBm)
TuH5 Fig. 4. Single- and double-pump 5.5-cm saturation behavior of the

8.6-cm-longwaveguide.
It is clear from these results that net gain above 30 dB can be reached
with 15-cm-long ion-exchanged phosphate-glass waveguide amplifiers,
used in single-pass configuration. But this will require high pump power,
which is not desirable. We have demonstrated here that similar gain will be
obtained with shorter waveguides and much lower pump power if the mode
confinement of these waveguides is high enough. This opens the way toward
low-cost, high-gain, compact, Er-doped-glass ion-exchanged waveguideamplifiers for 1.55-pm telecommunication applications.
The authors thank K. Ogawa for his support.
*Lucent Technologzes, Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974-

High-power continuous wave (cw) InGaAdAlGaAs laser diodes

have been the efficientpumping source for fiber lasers. We report 10.6W
cw power from a 100-pm-wide InGaAslAlGaAs quantum well laser
diode. Power conversion efficiencies as high as 59% have been achieved
for a 2-mm cavity-length diode. These devices also demonstrate a unique
resistance to thermal damage.
The laser structures consist of an InGaAs quantum well active
region between AlGaAs confinement layers. 100-pm-wide stripe diode
lasers were prepared and bonded p-side down on a conduction-cooled
heat sink.
Figure 1 shows the cw light-current (L-I) and efficiency-current
(qw-I) characteristics of an InGaAslAlGaAs laser diode (cavity length 4
mm) measured at 4 "C heat sink temperature. 10.64 W cw power from
front facet has been measured. The device exhibits no degradation at this
power level, however, measurement was interrupted to avoid damage to
the device. This power is 1.3 W higher than the best published data (9.3
W) for InGaAslAlGaAs laser diodes with nonabsorbing mirrors' and
about 30% higher than the best data (8.1 W) for Al-free InGaAs laser
diodes.' This laser diode not only shows high power capability, but also
reveal high efficiency. It achieves more than 50% power conversion
efficiency between 3-7 amp driving currents. The L-I characteristics
shown in Fig. 1 also indicate that the maximum power of the diode is
limited by cooling efficiency. If superior heat sinks such as, diamond heat
sink as in Ref. 2, were used, higher power is conceivable.
The laser structure used for this work shows low loss and high
efficiency. Figure 2 shows the L-I and qw-I characteristics of the laser
diode with 2-mm cavity length measured at heat sink temperature of
5 "C. As high as 59% power conversion efficiency has been achieved for

60

50

40

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0636
1. J.M.P. Delavaux, S. Granlund, 0.Mizuhara, L.D. Tzeng, D. Barbier,

2.

3.

4.

M. Rattay, F. Saint Andreand, A. Kevorkian, IEEE Photon. Technol.

Lett. 9, (1997).
D. Barbier, M. Rattay, N. Krebs, M. Trouillon, F. Saint Andri., G.
Clauss, J.M.P. Delavaux, presented at ECI0'97, Stockholm, Sweden, April 2-4, 1997.
D. Barbier, M. Rattay, F. Saint Andre, G. Clauss, M. Trouillon, A.
Kevorkian, J.M.P. Delavaux, E. Murphy, IEEE Photon. Technol.
Lett. 9, (1997).
D. Barbier, in Optical Amnplifitrs and their Applications, Vol. XVI of
OSA Trends in Optics and Photonics Series (Optical Society of
America, Washington, D.C., 1997).

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TuH6 Fig. 1. Continuous wave light-current (L-I) and efficiency-current

(qw-I) characteristics of an InGaAs/AlGaAs laser diode (cavity length 4 mm)
measured at 4 "C heat sink temperature.

OFC '98 Technical Digest

Tuesday Afternoon

47

line). The L-I curve matched fairly well at current lower than 6 amp.
Above 6 amp, two curve does not match exactly due to the unstable
temperature at high power because the thermal-electric cooler used was
not capable to maintain the stable temperature. The diode was also tested
at 25 "C and 35 "C up to 11 amp. Although L-I curve shows thermal-roll
over at 25 "C and 35 "C, no damage to the diodl: was observed.
In conclusion, record cw power from 100-pm-wide laser diodes has
been reported for an InGaAdAlGaAs quantum well laser. Diodes demonstrate high efficiency and robust to thermal damages.
1. B. Li, R.A. Parke, G.S. Jackson, R.R. Craig, i~nOptical Fiber Communication Conference, Vol. 6 of 1997 OSA Technical Digest Series
(Optical Society ofAmerica, Washington, D.C., 1997),pp. 352-353.
2. L.J. Mawst, A. Bhattacharya, M. Nesnidal, J. Lopez, D. Botez, D.Z.
Garbuzov, L. DeMarco, J.C. Connolly, h4. Jansen, F. Fang, R.F.
Nabiev, Appl. Phys. Lett., 69, 1532 (1996).

CW current (A)
TuH6 Fig. 2. Continuous wave L-I and qw-I characteristics of an InGaAs/
AlGaAs laser measured at heat sink temperature of 5 "C.

the diode. The differential quantum efficiency measured from L-I curve
in Fig. 2 is 87% at driving current of 3 amp.
The laser structure used for this work is robust to thermal rolling.
Figure 3 shows the L-I characteristicsof a device measured at various heat
sink temperatures. The diodle was first tested at 15 "C up to 11 amp
driving current (open circle in the figure). Thermal roll-over was observed. Then the same diode was measured at 5 "C up to 8.3 W without
damaging the device. In order to verify that diode was not damaged by
previous two measurements, diode was measured again at 15 "C (solid

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Ultrahigh-power laser diode array pump source for

fiber lasers
D. Boggavarapu, D. Caffey, X. He, S. Guipta, S. Srinivasan,
R. Pleak, R. Patel, Opt0 Power Corporation, 3321 East Global
Loop, Tucson, Arizona 85706
High-power laser diode arrays (HPLDAs) are finding increasing application in many fields due to low cost, small size, and high efficiency.l One factor limiting the use of HPLDAs is the highly asymmetric
beam (asymmetric MZfactor), which is difficult to efficiently couple
to optical fibers or focus to small spots. We remove this obstacle by
using a novel optical beamshaping t e c h n i q ~ e that
~ , ~ allows us to
achieve unprecedented high brightness fiber-coupled power levels
with a single multimode HPLDA.
One-centimeter-wide HPLDAs were fabricated from MOCVD
grown InGaAdAlGaAs epitaxial GRINSCH imaterial (48% emitterpacking density) and mounted on conductively cooled heat sinks.
These arrays exhibit high slope efficiency (-1.1 WIA) and power
conversion efficiency (>55%) with approximately 70 W multimode
cw optical power at I = 80 Amps and T = 25 C. We have used this
same array geometry to attain a record 155 W cw optical power.'
Spectral measurements reveal a center wavelength of 915 nm with -3
nm FWHM at the 70 W power level. Reliability tests are ongoing with
initial data showing >3000 hrs continuous operation at the 60 W
power level with degradation rates comparable to industry standard

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CW current (A)
TuH6 Fig. 3.

Continuous wave L-I characteristics of a InGaAdAlGaAs laser

diode at various heat sink temperatures.

Schematic diagram of the beamshaper optical system

(beamtrain from left to right-laser diode array to fiber).

TuH7 Fig. 1.