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Advances in fiber coupled high power diode laser modules at 793nm and 976nm for defense applications
We present the latest performance and reliability data of two novel high-brightness CW and QCW arrays of customized and mass-production modules, in compact and robust industry design for operation with high power and high duty cycles. All designs are based on single diode packages consisting of 10mm laser bars, soft or hard soldered between expansion matched submounts.
The modular components cover a wide span of designs which differ basically in water/conduction (active/passive) cooled, single, linear (horizontal and vertical) arranged designs, as well as housed and unhoused modules. The different assembling technologies of active and passive cooled base plates affect the heat dissipation and therefore the reachable power at different QCW operating conditions, as well as the lifetime.
As an example, a package consisting of 8 laser diodes, connected to a 28.8*13.5*7.0mm3 DCB (direct copper bonded) submount, passively or actively cooled is considered. This design is of particular interest for mobile applications seamless module to module building system, with an infinite number of laser bars at 1.7mm pitch. Using 940nm bars we can reach an optical output power per bar of 450W at 25°C base plate temperature with 10Hz, 1.2% duty cycle and 1.2ms pulse duration.
As an additional example, micro channel coolers can be vertically stacked up to 50 diodes with a 1,15mm pitch. This design is suitable for all applications, demanding also compactness and light weight and high power density. Using near infrared bars and others, we can reach an optical output power of 250W per bar at 25°C coolant temperature at CW operation.
To gain high brightness not only output power must be increased, but also near field widths and far field angles have to be below a certain value for higher power levels because brightness is proportional to output power divided by beam quality. While fast axis far fields typically show a current independent behaviour, for broadarea lasers far-fields in the slow axis suffer from a strong current and temperature dependence, limiting the brightness and therefore their use in fibre coupled modules. These limitations can be overcome by carefully optimizing chip temperature, thermal lensing and lateral mode structure by epitaxial and lateral resonator designs and processing.
We present our latest results for InGaAs/AlGaAs broad-area single emitters with resonator lengths of 4mm emitting at 976nm and illustrate the improvements in beam quality over the last years. By optimizing the diode laser design a record value of the brightness for broad-area lasers with 4mm resonator length of 126 MW/cm2sr has been demonstrated with a maximum wall-plug efficiency of more than 70%. From these design also pump modules based on 9 mini-bars consisting of 5 emitters each have been realized with 360W pump power.
We also report on a new approach based on 450 nm diode laser bars, which dramatically reduces size and alignment effort. These activities were performed within the German government-funded project “BlauLas”: a maximum output power of 80 W per bar has been demonstrated @ 450 nm. We show results of a 200 μm NA0.22 fiber coupled 35 W source @ 450 nm, which has been reduced in size by a factor of 25 compared to standard single emitter approach. In addition, we will present a 200 μm NA0.22 fiber coupled laser unit with an output power of 135 W.
We present results on the improvement of T-Bars tailored for optimized coupling into fibers with a diameter of 200 μm with NA 0.22 corresponding to a beam parameter product of 22 mm·mrad. Cost efficient coupling to this fiber requires a tailored beam parameter product smaller than 15.5 mm·mrad in slow axis direction corresponding to a slow axis beam divergence of 7° (full angle, 95% power content) for five 100 μm wide emitters. The improved T-Bars fulfil this requirement up to an output power of 52 W with a brightness of 3.1 W/mm·mrad and a power conversion efficiency achieving 69%. This progress in the T-Bar performance together with modifications in the module design led to the increase of the reliable output power from 135 W in 2009 to 360 W in 2017 for a T-Bar module with one baseplate. We will also give a review of the main development steps and further R and D improvements.
We have developed a scalable and modular diode laser architecture that fulfills these requirements through use of a simple beam shaping concept based on two dimensional stacking of tailored diode bars mounted on specially designed, tap water cooled heat sinks. The base element of the concept is a tailored diode laser bar with an epitaxial and lateral structure designed such that the desired beam quality in slow-axis direction can be realized without using sophisticated beam shaping optics. The optical design concept is based on fast-axis collimator (FAC) and slow-axis collimator (SAC) lenses followed by only one additional focusing optic for efficient coupling into a 400 μm fiber with a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.12.
To fulfill the requirements of scalability and modularity, four tailored bars are populated on a reduced size, tap water cooled heat sink. The diodes on these building blocks are collimated simply via FAC and SAC. The building blocks can be stacked vertically resulting in a two-dimensional diode stack, which enables a compact design of the laser source with minimum beam path length. For a single wavelength, up to eight of these building blocks, implying a total of 32 tailored bars, can be stacked into a submodule, polarization multiplexed, and coupled into a 400 μm, 0.12NA fiber. Scalability into the multi kW region is realized by wavelength combining of replaceable submodules in the spectral range from 900 – 1100 nm. We present results of a laser source based on this architecture with an output power of more than 4 kW and a beam quality of 25 mm x mrad.
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