News

18 January 2010

 

Oclaro reports 550W output for QCW-mode laser diode bars

At Photonics West 2010 in San Francisco, CA (23–28 January), lead design engineer Jurgen Muller of Oclaro Inc in San Jose, CA, USA is presenting new results on high-power laser diode bars operating in quasi continuous wave (QCW) mode that demonstrate what are claimed to be significant performance improvements, delivering output power of more than 550W at 200 microsecond pulse width and wall plug efficiency levels of more than 65%.

“The scalability of the high-power CW bar design to pulsed operation modes over a wide wavelength and temperature range will be a valuable feature in the solid-state laser pumping, laser illumination, direct-diode material processing, and medical markets,” reckons R&D director Norbert Lichtenstein.

The new dataset comprises results for an extended wavelength range from 808nm to 1080nm at temperatures up to 70ºC. For 808nm laser diodes on a conductively cooled standard CS-type assembly, up to 580W was measured at 500 microseconds and about 1% duty cycle. Similar results were achieved with 9xxnm laser diode bars. The latter were also assembled on a compact sandwich assembly with a footprint of just 12mm x 10mm and a height of 4.7mm. This device was operated up to >400W at 6% duty cycle and 25ºC.

Similar to all Oclaro high-power laser products, the front facet of the bar is protected against catastrophic optical damage (COD) by the firm's E2 mirror passivation process. Telecom-grade AuSn (gold tin) hard solder makes the product suitable for demanding industrial and defense applications in CW and hard-pulse operation mode.

Oclaro is also presenting five technical papers at the associated symposium LASE 2010:

• ‘CW to QCW power scaling of high-power laser bars’;
• ‘Eye-safe high-power laser diode in the 1410–1550 nm range’;
• ‘Reliable operation of 8xx mini-bar-based hermetic modules’;
• ‘Extending the wavelength range in the Oclaro high-brightness broad area modules’; and
• ‘Novel single-mode fiber-coupled broadband seed source for pulsed fiber laser systems’.

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