The beam quality of the semiconductor laser is influenced by the structure of the laser's own waveguide as well as the beam shaping system. The cylindrical lens is used to compress the laser beam in the fast-axis direction in optically pumped source applications. Significant spectral deterioration occurs during the shaping of the laser beam. The spectrum of the laser split into some small peaks and misaligned with the absorption peaks of the crystal, resulting in a decrease in the overall absorption efficiency. In this paper, the reasons of spectral deterioration are investigated, and the spectral characteristics are optimized by varying the the output facet coating film’s reflectivity of the semiconductor laser chip. An improvement scheme for spectral deterioration of high power semiconductor lasers after beam shaping is proposed. The experiment results shows that the deterioration of the spectrum is significantly eliminated when the coating film’s reflectivity is adjusted from 0.88% to nearly 15%. A 976nm high power semiconductor laser chip with 7.16% reflectivity coating film has the highest slope efficiency. Due to a trade-off between spectral quality and the slope efficiency, it is necessary to choose an appropriate coating film’s reflectivity on the output facet surface to achieve both high output power and good spectra. This has important application prospects in future solid-state laser pump source applications.
Couplers have always been crucial in integrated optics, particularly in silicon-based integrated optics, where silicon-based couplers are used to couple silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguides and common single-mode optical fibers. However, direct coupling between single-mode fibers and silicon waveguides causes significant coupling losses due to the huge difference in mode spot size. In this research work, we propose a novel cantilever-based silicon-on-insulator edge coupler. A silicon waveguide with a cantilever structure is first created on an SOI wafer, and then silicon dioxide (SiO2) and silicon nitride (Si3N4) layers are alternatively placed on top of it and etched into ridge waveguide shapes. At the same time, the dimensions of the silicon waveguide in the longitudinal direction (light transmission direction) taper to form a tapered waveguide, and the refractive index of the Si3N4 tapers in the longitudinal direction as the longitudinal length of the Si3N4 shortens layer by layer from bottom to top. The coupling efficiency of a single-mode fiber with a mode field diameter of 10.4 μm and the SOI silicon waveguide exceeded 91%. The silicon coupler was simulated and constructed using the finitedifference method in time domain (FDTD) and the eigenmode expansion (EME) method. This highly effective SOI silicon coupler is crucial for silicon optical integration and may be used in a variety of situations, including optical computing, optical sensing, and optical communication.
The polarization control of silicon photonic integrated devices is an urgent problem caused by the birefringence effect due to the structural asymmetry of the silicon (Si) waveguide (450 nm × 220 nm), which results in polarization loss, polarization mode dispersion, and wavelength polarization related issues. This work presents a proposal for a compact silicon hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) polarization controller. The proposed design includes two sets of Bragg gratings, placed within different material layers of the polarization controller. By changing the relative positions of the two sets of Bragg gratings, the absorption problem generated by the hybridized modes can be reduced or even eliminated, thus the reflection spectrums of the TE and TM polarization mode are optimized. Besides, one polarization mode of TE mode and TM mode has a high reflectivity, while the other polarization mode has a high transmission by designing different grating periods and other parameters. Based on the simulations and design, the silicon HPW polarization controller has an optimal length of 23.247 microns when used as a TM-mode polarization reflector, and the corresponding optimal length is 19.694 microns when used as a TE-mode polarization reflector. At the working wavelength, the polarization extinction ratio (ER) and insertion loss (IL) of the TM-mode polarization reflector are greater than 28.1 dB and less than 0.087 dB, respectively, and the ER and IL of the TE-mode polarization reflector are greater than 18.9 dB and less than 0.085 dB, respectively. Compared with conventional silicon waveguide polarization controllers, TE mode and TM mode separation, selection, transmission, and reflection of the proposed silicon HPW polarization controller can be achieved with a compact size. In the future, will be potential for widespread applications for this technology in both silicon photonic devices and silicon photonic integrated circuits.
We have designed a fiber coupling method based on the spatial beam combining of the Photonic Crystal (PC) Laser Diode (LD). The PC LD with a small fast-axis divergence angle makes it possible to reduce the requirements for the numerical aperture and the processing precision of the optical elements, increase the alignment tolerance of components, reduce the difficulty of shaping, and improve the product yield. In the module, there is no need for the collimation of the fast-axis and slow-axis beams, which can be simultaneously focused into the optical fiber through an aspheric cylindrical lens. The simulated results, obtained by the ray tracing method, have shown a coupling efficiency of around 91.4% when the PC LD is coupled into a fiber with a core diameter of 105 μm and the numerical aperture of 0.22. Then, we have performed the experiments, and the coupling efficiency of 71.5% has been achieved. By analyzing the deviation of the simulated and experimental coupling efficiency, we have proposed several solutions. Finally, according to the strategy of this beam shaping, we also list several promising arrangements, which further prove that the beam shaping method possesses broad application prospects.
Photonic crystal laser diode bars have the advantages of low vertical divergence angle and high resistance to catastrophic optical mirror damage. However, with the increase of output power, the waste heat problem is becoming more serious, affecting the further improvement of laser performance. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the thermal characteristics of bars. In this paper, the fluid-solid coupling conjugate heat transfer model of a microchannel cooled photonic crystal laser diode bar is established through the Finite Element Method (FEM) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical methods. The transient thermal behavior, steady-state characteristics, and temperature distribution of photonic crystal laser diode bars under continuous (CW) operating states are studied in detail. The simulation results show that the junction temperature is 55.48°C, and the thermal resistance is 0.48 K/W. The closer the emitter is to the bar center, the easier the thermal crosstalk occurs. In the experiment, the continuous output power of the photonic crystal laser bar is 112.13 W at 120 A, the junction temperature is 57.14 °C, and the thermal resistance is 0.50 K/W. The simulations of bars are consistent with the experiment.
The application of high-performance VCSELs is extending from consumer electronics to automotive applications. Wet oxidation is an important technology in the fabrication of VCSELs. In this paper, we studied the wet oxidation process and mechanism in order to accurately control the oxidation aperture and improve the power and the conversion efficiency. Current density distributions of VCSELs with different oxide apertures are simulated based on COMSOL Multiphysics. In the experiment, the output power, conversion efficiency and threshold current of single junction and five-junction 940 nm VCSELs varying with oxide apertures are measured. Five-junction VCSELs exhibit maximum power conversion efficiencies are more than 60% and slope efficiency are more than 5.28W/A with oxide aperture from 9 to 15 μm under room temperature pulse condition (50 µs pulse width, 0.5% duty cycle). In addition, 385-element five-junction VCSEL array exhibits maximum power conversion efficiency of 53.45%. The five-junction VCSELs can be used as the basic laser source for the automotive applications.
Photonic crystal laser diodes are characterized by low divergence angle and high brightness, but thermal effects have become a major obstacle to further improvement of output power and efficiency. The thermal characteristics of high- power photonic crystal laser diodes are of great importance to improve the output power and increase the lifetime. In this paper, the physical heat dissipation model of a single photonic crystal laser diode with CS-mount package is established. Steady-state thermal characteristics simulations are performed using the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the influences of different parameters, such as solder, transition heat sink and heat sink on the thermal characteristics are analyzed. The simulation results show that the thickness and thermal conductivity of the heat sink materials are the main factors impacting the heat dissipation of the laser. The thermal resistance of the laser can be reduced effectively by using heat sink materials of high thermal conductivity. On the premise of ensuring wettability and reliability, the thickness of the solder layer should be decreased. A photonic crystal laser diode with a cavity length of 4 mm and a stripe width of 350µm based on an optimized heat dissipation structure is designed and fabricated. The CW output power of 41.9W, the vertical divergence angle of 18.48° and the thermal resistance of 1.54 K/W are obtained under the injection current of 50A at 20 ℃.
In this paper, the direct bonding InGaAs/Si avalanche photodiode (APD) with certain gain is developed. This structure separates the optical absorption region (InGaAs) from the multiplication region (Si). Avalanche multiplication takes place in the Si layer after the carriers injected from the absorption region. InGaAs and Si wafer are connected together by wafer bonding technology. The interface quality of InGaAs / Si material is good through optimizing the physical and chemical cleaning methods and bonding conditions of InGaAs/InP and Si epitaxial wafers. The InGaAs / Si APD is fabricated by conventional semiconductor process. The gain of InGaAs / Si APD is 43 at 38V. Further optimization of the process can obtain lower dark current and higher gain bandwidth product. This kind of device can be used for long-distance optical fiber communication.
A tilted wave (TW) laser based on the quasi-periodicity photonic crystal (QPC) structure is studied to improve the maximum power and wall-plug efficiency of laser diodes. In this work, we first use the longitudinal QPC structure instead of the thick passive waveguide compared with previously reported. In order to localize the first order mode, we designed and optimized the longitudinal QPC structure. The optical confinement factor (OCF) of the fundamental mode is only onesixth of the first order mode. In the experiment, a continuous wave power of 12.8 W at 980 nm is achieved with a peak power conversion efficiency of 57.2%. The laser emitted two nearly symmetric narrow vertical beams in far field pattern, which has a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 7.6° each.
The semiconductor laser diode has the advantage of low cost, high efficiency, and compactness, but the beam divergence is too large to directly use. The phase-locked laser array is an efficient way to control the lateral lasing mode, which can help to achieve narrow farfield.. Though the lasing mode of phase-locked laser array can be an in-phase mode via Ywaveguide, integrated with phase shifter and external cavity, it still has a large side lobe in the farfiled. We demonstrated an on-chip phase and amplitude manipulation method to suppress the side-lobe in the farfield. The intensity of the sidelobes decrease from 0.307 to 0.109 and the integral energy of the main lobe increase from 52.5% to 60.5%
The hybridization of active and passive platforms are always the hot area of material science and experimental physics, which also attracts our attention. We demonstrate a device composes silicon photonic crystal structure and perovskite. Single mode lasing is observed at 577nm, with full width half maximum (FWHM) of 0.3nm. While a thin film of allinoganic lead-halide perovskite is spin-coated atop, under the same pump situation, there exists a sharp peak at 565nm, with FWHM of 0.4nm. At the same time, the single peak at 470nm gradually shifts towards to longer wavelength and then splits into two peaks in photoluminescence (PL) spectra. Photonic band structure is calculated by the plane-wave expansion method. We choose the bandedge modes at Γ point for laser action from the band structure. Then the device is simulated as a whole and optimized by finite element method. Our works demonstrate that the visible light can resonant in silicon material, which indicates that active optical material such as perovskite can be hybridized with integrated circuits in future.
High-efficiency, high-power and high-brightness, fiber-coupled modules based on semiconductor laser diodes have been important sources in many fields, such as fiber laser pumping, material processing and defense applications. The coupling efficiency of fiber-coupled module has been limited due to the large vertical divergent angle of conventional semiconductor laser diodes. We present a high coupling efficiency module by using photonic-band-crystal (PBC) laser diodes with narrow vertical divergent angle. Fourteen PBC single-emitter laser diodes are combined into a fiber with core diameter of 200 μm and numerical aperture (NA) of 0.22. A high and stability coupling efficiency of 88% and peak otuput power of 47W with the injection current of 5 A are obtained. A comparison with the coupling efficiency of conventional laser diodes module is also presented. And there is a 5% increase of fiber-coupled efficiency based on PBC laser diodes module compared to conventional semiconductor laser diodes module.
Ridge-waveguide (RW) lasers based on photonic crystal structure were fabricated and measured. We investigated the effect of residual layer thickness (corresponding to etching depth) and ridge width on electro-optical characteristics of RW lasers. For deep-etching RW lasers, although lateral beam quality factor M2 is better than that of shallow-etching RW lasers, the other characteristics such as output power are much less than that of shallow-etching RW lasers. The calculating results indicate that RW lasers with ridge width w ≥ 8 μm will operate in mixing mode. The experimentally results of various ridge width RW lasers show that RW laser with 7 μm ridge operated in single mode over the whole measurement range and RW laser with 8 μm ridge change from single-mode operation to mixing-mode operation with the increasing of driving current. The device with 7-μm-wide ridge and 3-mm-long cavity obtain 2 W single-transverse-mode optical power and 59% maximum power conversion efficiency. The lateral beam quality factors M2 values are less than 1.7 over the whole measuring range.
High power and high beam quality laser sources are required in numerous applications such as nonlinear frequency conversion, optical pumping of solid-state and fiber lasers, material processing and others. Tapered lasers can provide a high output power while keeping a high beam quality. However, the conventional tapered lasers suffer from a large vertical beam divergence. We have demonstrated 2-mm long tapered lasers with photonic crystal structures. A high beam quality and a narrow vertical divergence are achieved.
In this paper, we optimized the photonic crystal structure and fabricated a 4-mm long tapered laser to further increase the output power and the wall-plug efficiency. Compared with our precious wafer, the optimized structure has a lower doping level to reduce the internal loss. The period of the photonic crystal structure and the thickness of the upper cladding are also reduced. The device has a 1-mm long ridge-waveguide section and a 3-mm long tapered section. The taper angle is 4°. An output power of 7.3 W is achieved with a peak wall-plug efficiency of 46% in continuous-wave mode. The threshold current is around 500 mA and the slope efficiency is 0.93 W/A. In pulsed mode, the output power is 15.6 W and the maximum wall-plug efficiency is 48.1%. The far-field divergence with full width at half maximum is 6.3° for the lateral direction at 3 A. The vertical far-field beam divergence is around 11° at different injection levels. High beam qualities are demonstrated by beam quality factor M2 of 1.52 for the lateral direction and 1.54 for the vertical direction.
The high sensitivity APD arrays have more and more application in the data transmission, LIDAR, remote sensing, medical image diagnosis system, environmental monitoring, military reconnaissance and etc. A preliminary study of Si APD was carried out, including the simulation of the photoelectric characteristics of Si APD, the experiment of Si APD single chip and array, and the test of Si APD. The APD gain is above 100, dark current is several nA, the rise time is nanosecond level. The 4×4, 1×16 Si APD arrays with high gain, quick response and low dark current have been made by means of available conventional semiconductor technology. The pulse width of the transient response under 1064 nm pulse LD illuminated is less than 100 ns at 100 V bias voltage which the pulse width is limited by the following amplification circuit. Some measures to improve the responsivity of APD at 1064nm is discussed. The next step is to develop the CMOS compatible high sensitivity APD array integrated with CMOS readout circuit.
High efficiency 980 nm longitudinal photonic band crystal (PBC) edge emitting laser diodes are designed and fabricated. The calculated results show that eight periods of Al0.1Ga0.9As and Al0.25Ga0.75As layer pairs can reduce the vertical far field divergence to 10.6° full width at half maximum (FWHM). The broad area (BA) lasers show a very high internal quantum efficiency ηi of 98% and low internal loss αi of 1.92 cm-1. Ridge waveguide (RW) lasers with 3 mm cavity length and 5um strip width provide 430 mW stable single transverse mode output at 500 mA injection current with power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 47% under continuous wave (CW) mode. A maximum PCE of 50% is obtained at the 300 mA injection current. A very low vertical far field divergence of 9.4° is obtained at 100 mA injection. At 500 mA injection, the vertical far field divergence increases to 11°, the beam quality factors M2 values are 1.707 in vertical direction and 1.769 in lateral direction.
High power tapered lasers with nearly diffraction-limited beam quality have attracted much attention in numerous applications such as nonlinear frequency conversion, optical pumping of solid-state and fiber lasers, medical treatment and others. However, the large vertical divergence of conventional tapered lasers is a disadvantage, which makes beam shaping difficult and expensive in applications. Diode lasers with photonic crystal structure can achieve a large mode size and a narrow vertical divergence. In this paper, we present tapered lasers with photonic crystal structure emitting at 980 nm. The epitaxial layer is grown using metal organic chemical vapor deposition. The device has a total cavity length of 2 mm, which consists of a 400-um long ridge-waveguide section and a 1600-um long tapered section. The taper angle is 4°. An output power of 3.3 W is achieved with a peak conversion efficiency of 35% in pulsed mode. The threshold current is 240 mA and the slope efficiency is 0.78 W/A. In continuous wave mode, the output power is 2.87 W, which is limited by a suddenly failure resulting from catastrophic optical mirror damage. The far field divergences with full width at half maximum are 12.3° in the vertical direction and 2.9° in the lateral direction at 0.5 A. At high injection level the vertical divergence doesn’t exceed 16°. Beam quality factor M2 is measured based on second moment definition in CW mode. High beam quality is demonstrated by M2 value of less than 2 in both vertical and lateral directions.
Edge-emitting laser diodes operating at 900 nm are designed and fabricated with an epitaxial one-dimensional
photonic crystal (PC). PC structure consists of a p-waveguide layer, an active quantum region, and an
n-waveguide layer. The p-cladding totally reflects one tilted optical mode. The PC with a particular band
structure confines the optical mode with a certain tilted angle. Meanwhile mode extends vertically due to the
photonic band modulation at the direction perpendicular to the interface. Then we obtain the broad-area lasers
with a narrow vertical far-field divergence of 10°, and a small thermal shift (dλ/dT~-0.06 nm/K) in continuous
wave operation.
The Bragg diffraction condition of surface-emitting lasing action is analyzed and Γ2-1 mode is chosen for lasing. Two
types of lateral cavity photonic crystal surface emitting lasers (LC-PCSELs) based on the PhC band edge mode lateral
resonance and vertical emission to achieve electrically driven surface emitting laser without distributed Bragg reflectors
in the long wavelength optical communication band are designed and fabricated. Deep etching techniques, which rely on
the active layer being or not etched through, are adopted to realize the LC-PCSELs on the commercial AlGaInAs/InP
multi-quantum-well (MQW) epitaxial wafer. 1553.8 nm with ultralow threshold of 667 A/cm2 and 1575 nm with large
power of 1.8 mW surface emitting lasing actions are observed at room temperature, providing potential values for mass
production with low cost of electrically driven PCSELs.
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