Catastrophic facet and bulk degradation in high power multi-mode InGaAs strained quantum well single emitters

Yongkun Sin; Nathan Presser; Brendan Foran; Neil Ives; Steven C. Moss

doi:10.1117/12.807359

23 February 2009 Catastrophic facet and bulk degradation in high power multi-mode InGaAs strained quantum well single emitters

Yongkun Sin, Nathan Presser, Brendan Foran, Neil Ives, Steven C. Moss

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7198, High-Power Diode Laser Technology and Applications VII; 719818 (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.807359
Event: SPIE LASE: Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering, 2009, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

Extensive investigations by a number of groups have identified catastrophic sudden degradation as the main failure mode in both single-mode and multi-mode InGaAs-AlGaAs strained quantum well (QW) lasers. Significant progress made in performance characteristics of broad-area InGaAs strained QW single emitters in recent years has led to an optical output power of over 20W and a power conversion efficiency of over 70% under CW operation. However, unlike 980nm single-mode lasers that have shown high reliability operation under a high optical power density of ~50MW/cm², broad-area lasers have not achieved the same level of reliability even under a much lower optical power density of ~5MW/cm². This paper investigates possible mechanisms that prevent broad-area lasers from achieving high reliability operation by performing accelerated lifetests of these devices and in-depth failure mode analyses of degraded devices with various destructive and non-destructive techniques including EBIC, FIB, and HR-TEM techniques. The diode lasers that we have investigated are commercial MOCVD-grown broad-area strained InGaAs single QW lasers at ~975nm. Both passivated and unpassivated broad-area lasers were studied that yielded catastrophic failures at the front facet and also in the bulk. To investigate the role that generation and propagation of defects plays in degradation processes via recombination enhanced defect reaction (REDR), EBIC was employed to study dark line defects in degraded lasers, failed under different stress conditions, and the correlation between DLDs and stress levels is reported. FIB was then employed to prepare TEM samples from the DLD areas for cross-sectional HR-TEM analysis.

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Yongkun Sin, Nathan Presser, Brendan Foran, Neil Ives, and Steven C. Moss "Catastrophic facet and bulk degradation in high power multi-mode InGaAs strained quantum well single emitters", Proc. SPIE 7198, High-Power Diode Laser Technology and Applications VII, 719818 (23 February 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.807359

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