Recent progress of high-power GaN-based laser diodes

Abstract

High-power pure blue laser diodes (LDs) are expected to be adopted to the light sources for full color laser display systems. We have succeeded in fabricating high-power blue (445nm) LDs with an output power of 500mW. The typical operating current, voltage and wall-plug efficiency of these LDs were 480mW, 4.8V and 21.7%, respectively. The lifetime of these LDs was estimated to be over 10,000 hours under continuous-wave operation. Moreover, we succeeded in fabricating the high-luminance white light source by combining the high-power blue LD, optical fiber, and phosphor. In this paper, we report recent progress and future prospects of the high-power GaN-based blue LDs and the new concept of high-luminance white light source.