Paper
17 February 2010 High duty cycle hard soldered kilowatt laser diode arrays
Genady Klumel, Yoram Karni, Jacob Oppenheim, Yuri Berk, Moshe Shamay, Renana Tessler, Shalom Cohen
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
High-brightness laser diode arrays operating at a duty cycle of 10% - 20% are in ever-increasing demand for the optical pumping of solid state lasers and directed energy applications. Under high duty-cycle operation at 10% - 20%, passive (conductive) cooling is of limited use, while micro-coolers using de-ionized cooling water can considerably degrade device reliability. When designing and developing actively-cooled collimated laser diode arrays for high duty cycle operation, three main problems should be carefully addressed: an effective local and total heat removal, a minimization of packaging-induced and operational stresses, and high-precision fast axis collimation. In this paper, we present a novel laser diode array incorporating a built-in tap water cooling system, all-hard-solder bonded assembly, facet-passivated high-power 940 nm laser bars and tight fast axis collimation. By employing an appropriate layout of water cooling channels, careful choice of packaging materials, proper design of critical parts, and active optics alignment, we have demonstrated actively-cooled collimated laser diode arrays with extended lifetime and reliability, without compromising their efficiency, optical power density, brightness or compactness. Among the key performance benchmarks achieved are: 150 W/bar optical peak power at 10% duty cycle, >50% wallplug efficiency and <1° collimated fast axis divergence. A lifetime of >0.5 Ghots with <2% degradation has been experimentally proven. The laser diode arrays have also been successfully tested under harsh environmental conditions, including thermal cycling between -20°C and 40°C and mechanical shocks at 500g acceleration. The results of both performance and reliability testing bear out the effectiveness and robustness of the manufacturing technology for high duty-cycle laser arrays.
© (2010) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Genady Klumel, Yoram Karni, Jacob Oppenheim, Yuri Berk, Moshe Shamay, Renana Tessler, and Shalom Cohen "High duty cycle hard soldered kilowatt laser diode arrays", Proc. SPIE 7583, High-Power Diode Laser Technology and Applications VIII, 75830C (17 February 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.843660
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Cited by 2 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Collimation

Semiconductor lasers

Reliability

High power lasers

Manufacturing

Active optics

Laser development

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