Influence of Package Structure on the Performance of the Single Emitter Diode Laser

Abstract

The package structure critically influences the major characteristics of semiconductor lasers, such as thermal behavior, output power, wavelength, and far-field distribution. In this paper, a new single emitter package structure called F-mount is designed and compared with the conventional package structure C-mount. The influence of package structure on their performances is characterized and analyzed. The thermal resistances of lasers with different package structures are calculated through simulation, and are contrasted with experimental results. Some devices are also tested for the maximum output power level. Under the continuous wave (CW) condition, the maximum power of F-mount reaches 12.6 W at 808 nm while the output power only reaches 10.9 W for C-mount. Under the condition of 0.5% duty cycle (100 μs, 50 Hz), the catastrophic optical mirror damage level reaches 58.7 W at 74 A for F-mount, and 54.8 W at 57 A for C-mount are reported for the first time. It is experimentally found that there is an obvious wavelength difference between the two type structure lasers: about 1.37 nm in CW mode and 2.89 nm in quasi CW mode. Theoretical analysis shows that red-shift and blue-shift is a result of external strain in the package process of F-mount and C-mount, respectively. It is also found that the package structure has an effect on the divergence angle of slow axis far fields, but little impact on that of fast axis far fields. The analysis shows that package structure has a strong influence on the performance of the laser; therefore, the package should be optimized to achieve better performance for some special applications.