Fiber lasers have made significant progress in terms of power output, beam quality and operational robustness over the
past few years. Key to this progress has been advances in two technologies - fiber technology and 9xx nm diode laser
pump technology based on single emitters. We present the operational characteristics of our new high brightness 9xx nm
fiber laser pump sources based on diode laser bars and diode laser bar arrays and discuss the design trade offs involved
for realization of devices focused on this application. These trade offs include achieving the lowest slow axis divergence
while maintaining high wall plug efficiency and minimizing facet power density to maximize reliability.
We describe the performance and reliability of high power vertical diode stacks based on silicon monolithic microchannel
coolers (SiMMs) operating at >1000W/cm2 CW at 808 and 940nm. The monolithic nature of these stacks makes
them inherently robust and compact. Typical emitting dimensions for a 10-bar stack are ~8.8mm × 10mm with CW
output power up to 1.5kW. Originally developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and now actively being
developed for commercial applications at Coherent, this technology offers several advantages over current copper-based
micro-channel coolers. These devices do not require use of DI water, strict monitoring and control of the pH level,
careful control of the water velocity, or sealed cooling systems. The need for hydrostatic seals is also drastically reduced.
A typical ten bar stack requires only 2 o-ring seals, compared to 20 such seals for a similar stack using copper microchannel
cooling. Mature and readily available wet etching technology allows for cost effective batch fabrication of the
sub-mount structure while achieving repeatable high precision components based on photolithographic fabrication
processes.
The 880 nm diode laser is emerging as the source of choice for pumping Nd:YV04 laser crystals because it offers higher pumping efficiency than 808 nm diode lasers[1]. This paper reports on recent progress in the development of high power, high reliability, 880 nm laser bars. Specifically, high performance has been achieved based on Coherent's aluminum-free active (AAA) epitaxial structures while maintaining lifetimes greater than 10,000 hours. This includes 30% fill factor, 1 cm bars on conductively cooled packages (CCP) operating at 51 W with proven manufacturability. We observed power conversion efficiency (PCE) of up to 56%. These lasers have a far field fast axis divergence of 32° (FWHM), and slow axis divergence of <7° (FWHM). Typical value of the FWHM of output spectrum is 2.5 nm. These bars were used to build fiber array packages (FAPs) operating at 45 W. We have achieved FAP PCE of 50% and numerical aperture of <0.12. Reliability of both bars and FAP was shown to exceed 10000h MTBF.
Manufacturers of Nd:YAG lasers continue to demand 808 nm pump sources that deliver ever lower operating costs (measured in $/kW-hour). Responding to this demand, Coherent has developed a new generation of high power, 808 nm laser bars. These lasers are most ideal for high power QCW applications, but also perform very well in CW pumping applications. The key to the improved power for QCW bars is increase in catastrophic optical damage (COD) threshold. Through a combination of advances in epitaxial structure design and coating technology after aging COD limit for new generation of bars has been increased by 40%. This allowed us to achieve reliable QCW operation at 270W of peak power. Life test results shows that lifetime of these bars at these conditions exceed 2e9 shots. We also developed similar structure optimized for CW operations. When mounted on micro-channel water cooled packages CW bars operate reliably at an output power of 150 W. Highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) for CW bars was more
then 55% with typical PCE value >50%.
Ongoing optimization of epitaxial design within Coherent device engineering has led to a family of high power-conversion-efficiency (PCE) products on conductively cooled packages (CCP) and fiber array packages (FAP). At a 25°C heat sink temperature, the PCE was measured at 71.5% with 75W CW output power on 30% fill-factor (FF) bars with passive cooling. At heat sink temperatures as high as 60°C the PCE of these bars is still maintained above 60%. Powered by such high efficiency 9xx nm diodes, Coherent FAP products have consistently exceeded 55% PCE up to 50W power levels, with 62% PCE demonstrated out of the fiber. High linear-power-density (LPD) operation of 100μm x 7-emitter bars at LPD = 80 mW/μm was also demonstrated. Bars with 7-emitter were measured up to 140W QCW power before catastrophic optical mirror damage (COMD) occurred, which corresponds to a COMD value of 200mW/μm or 2D facet power density of 29.4 MW/cm2. Leveraging these improvements has enabled high power FAPs with >90W CW from an 800μm-diameter fiber bundle. Extensive reliability testing has already accumulated 400,000 total real-time device hours at a variety of accelerated and non-accelerated operating conditions. A random failure rate <0.5% per kilo-hours and gradual degradation rate <0.4% per kilo-hours have been observed. For a 30% FF 50W CW 9xx nm bar, this equates to >30,000 hours of median lifetime at a 90% confidence level. More optimized 30% FF 9xx nm bars are under development for power outputs up to 80W CW with extrapolated median lifetimes greater than 20,000 hours.
Solid-state-laser and fiber laser pumping, reprographics, medical and materials processing applications require high power, high-brightness bars and fiber-coupled arrays. Conductively cooled laser diode bars allow customers to simplify system design and reduce operational size, weight, and costs. We present results on next generation high brightness, high reliability bars and fiber-coupled arrays at 790-830 nm, 940 nm and 980 nm wavelengths. By using novel epitaxial structures, we have demonstrated highly reliable 808 nm, 30% fill-factor conductively cooled bars operating at 60W CW mode, corresponding to a linear power density (LPD) of 20 mW/μm. At 25°C, the bars have shown greater than 50% wall-plug-efficiency (WPE) when operating at 60W. Our novel approach has also reduced the fast-axis divergence FWHM from 31° to less than 24°. These bars have a 50% brightness improvement compared to our standard products with this geometry. At 980nm, we have demonstrated greater than 100W CW from 20% fill-factor conductively cooled bars, corresponding to a LPD of 50 mW/µm. At 25°C, the WPE for 976nm bars consistently peaks above 65% and remains greater than 60% at 100W. We coupled the beam output from those high-brightness bars into fiber-array-packages (“FAPs”), and we also achieved high-brightness and high-efficiency FAPs. We demonstrated 60W from a 600µm core-diameter fiber-bundle with a high WPE of 55%, and a low numerical aperture of 0.115. The brightness of such FAPs is four times higher than our standard high-power 40W FAP products at Coherent. Ongoing life test data suggests an extrapolated lifetime greater than 10,000 hours at 80W CW operating-condition based on 30%FF conductively cooled bar geometry.
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