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This work presents progress in the root-cause analysis of power saturation mechanisms in continuous wave (CW) driven GaAs-based high-power broad area diode lasers operated at 935 nm. Target is to increase efficiency at high optical CW powers by epitaxial design. The novel extreme triple asymmetric (ETAS) design was developed and patented within this work to equip diode lasers that use an extremely thin p-waveguide with a high modal gain. An iterative variation of diode lasers employing ETAS designs was used to experimentally clarify the impact of modal gain on the temperature dependence of internal differential quantum efficiency (IDQE) and optical loss. High modal gain leads to increased free carrier absorption from the active region. However, less power saturation is observed, which must then be attributed to an improved temperature sensitivity of the IDQE. The effect of longitudinal spatial hole burning (LSHB) leads to above average non-linear carrier loss at the back facet of the device. At high CW currents the junction temperature rises. Therefore, not only the asymmetry of the carrier profile increases but also the average carrier density in order to compensate for the decreased material gain and increased threshold gain. This carrier non-pinning effect above threshold is found in this work to enhance the impact of LSHB already at low currents, leading to rapid degradation of IDQE with temperature. This finding puts LSHB into a new context for CW-driven devices as it emphasizes the importance of low carrier densities at threshold. The carrier density was effectively reduced by applying the novel ETAS design. This enabled diode lasers to be realized that show minimized degradation of IDQE with temperature and therefore improved performance in CW operation.
Edge-emitting quantum-well diode lasers based on GaAs combine a high conversion efficiency, a wide range of emission wavelengths covering a span from 630 nm to 1180 nm, and the ability to achieve high output powers. The often used longitudinal-invariant Fabry-Pérot-type resonators are easy to design but often lead to functionality or performance limitations. In this work, the application of laterally-longitudinally non-uniform resonator configurations is explored as a way to reduce unwanted and performance-limiting effects. The investigations are carried out on existing and entirely newly developed laser designs using dedicated simulation tools. These include a sophisticated time-dependent laser simulator based on a traveling-wave model of the optical fields in the lateral-longitudinal plane and a Maxwell solver based on the eigenmode expansion method for the simulation of passive waveguides. Whenever possible, the simulation results are compared with experimental data. Based on this approach, three fundamentally different laser types are investigated: • Dual-wavelength lasers emitting two slightly detuned wavelengths around 784 nm out of a single aperture • Ridge-waveguide lasers with tapered waveguide and contact layouts that emit light of a wavelength of around 970 nm • Broad-area lasers with slightly tapered contact layouts emitting at 910 nm The results of this thesis underline the potential of lateral-longitudinal non-uniform laser designs to increase selected aspects of device performance, including beam quality, spectral stability, and output power.
A compact and portable laser light source emitting in the wavelength range between 210 nm and 230 nm would enable numerous applications outside of laboratory environments, such as sterilization and disinfection of medical equipment, water purification or gas and air analysis using absorption spectroscopy. Such a source is also highly attractive for the identification and quantification of proteins and biomolecules by means of laser-induced fluorescence or Raman spectroscopy. In this thesis, a novel concept to realize such a compact and portable laser light source with low power consumption and an emission around 222 nm is investigated. The developed concept is based on single-pass frequency doubling of a commercially available high-power GaN laser diode emitting in the blue spectral range. Due to the low frequency doubling conversion efficiencies in this wavelength range of about 10-4 W-1, a laser diode with high optical output power above 1 W is required as pump source. Moreover, it has to exhibit narrowband emission in the range of the acceptance bandwidth of the applied nonlinear BBO crystal. Since GaN-based high-power laser diodes typically show broad emission spectra of Δλ = 1…2 nm, stabilizing and narrowing their wavelength by using external wavelength-selective elements is investigated and presented for the first time. With the understanding for the novel concept gained in this work, a compact ultraviolet laser light source was realized. It has a power consumption of less than 10 W and is exceptionally robust due to its immoveable components. The demonstrated output power of 160 μW enables numerous industrial and everyday applications for which previous laser systems have been too complex and overly cost- and energy-intensive.
ndustrial laser systems for material processing applications rely on the availability of highly efficient, high-brightness diode lasers. GaAs-based broad-area laser bars play a vital role in such applications as pump sources for high-beam-quality solid-state lasers and, increasingly, as direct processing tools. This work studies 940 nm-laser bars emitting 1 kW optical power at room temperature, identifying those physical mechanisms that are currently limiting electrical-to-optical conversion efficiency as well as lateral beam quality. In the process, several diagnostic studies on bars with varied lateral-longitudinal design were carried out. The effects of technological measures for performance optimization were analyzed, yielding a new benchmark in efficiency and lateral divergence. The studies into altered resonator lengths of 4 and 6 mm as well as fill factors between 69 and 87 % successfully reduce both the voltage dropping across the device and power saturation at high currents, enabling 66 % efficiency at the operation point. Concrete measures how to reach efficiencies ≥70 % are presented thereafter, showing that doubling the efficiency value of the first 1 kW-demonstration in 2007 – amounting to 35 % – is in near reach. Investigation of the beam quality bases on a herein proposed and realized concept, in which the far field is resolved for each individual bar emitter. In this way, it is possible to determine how far-field profiles vary along the bar width and how much these variations affect the overall bar far-field. Further, such effects specific to bar structures can be separated into non-thermal and thermal influences. The effect of mechanical chip deformation (bar smile) as well as neighboring-emitter interaction has been investigated for the first time in active kW-class devices, yielding a lateral divergence as low as 8.8° at the operation point.
During the past years, wireless communication systems have been rapidly advancing to meet the high data-rate requirements of various emerging applications. However, the existing transceivers have typically been demonstrated using CMOS-compatible technologies that deliver a relatively low equivalent isotropic radiated power in a small unit cell. Moreover, the particular device characteristics are limiting the linear region for operation. Therefore, the main focus of this dissertation is to present and discuss new design methods for transceivers to solve these issues. To reduce the complexity of the transceiver module for further phased-array scaling, a low-noise power amplifier design approach is designed using a 0.15-μm GaN-on-SiC high-electron mobility transistor technology (HEMT). Utilizing a traded off interstage matching topology between loss and bandwidth, the conversion loss induced by the matching network could be effectively reduced. A stacked-FET configuration was adopted to enhance the power handling of the RF switch. Further improvement on the isolation bandwidth was investigated using theoretical analysis on the intrinsic effect of the passive HEMTs. With the successful implementation of the RF front-end circuits, transceiver modules were integrated on Rogers RO3010 substrate. The planar dual exponentially tapered slot antenna phased-array system showed a compact size with simple biasing network compared to the conventional transceiver approach. The presented T/R module was characterized with an over-the-air test at a distance of 1 m, overcoming the free space path loss of 64 dB. It also shows a high flexibility for further integration with a larger number of array systems, which is very promising for future 5G communication systems.
To enable the fabrication of high performance ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) this work aims at improving the quality of AlN base layers on sapphire substrates. The main issues for UV LEDs are still a limited internal quantum efficiency due to a high amount of threading dislocations along with a limited light extraction efficiency due to total internal reflection at the AlN/sapphire interface. Therefore, high-temperature annealing of AlN/sapphire layers and growth on nanopatterned sapphire substrates were comprehensively investigated. High-temperature annealing was applied to AlN layers of different strain and thickness grown by metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE). The threading dislocation density could be successfully reduced by more than one order of magnitude down to 6 × 108 cm-2. Wave optical simulations of UV LEDs on nanopatterned sapphire substrates (NPSS) were conducted and showed a potential increase in light extraction efficiency compared to a planar substrate. The optimized MOVPE growth process on sapphire nanopillars and sapphire nanoholes resulted in a fully coalesced and atomically smooth AlN surface. The threading dislocation density was reduced to 1 ×109 cm-2 for AlN on both nanopillars and nanoholes. UVC LEDs emitting at 265 nm wavelength were grown on top of the developed templates. Increased internal efficiency was obtained by reduced dislocation density and more efficient light extraction was achieved on NPSS in case of a transparent heterostructure and reflective contacts. Thus, the developed templates yield considerable improvement in light output compared to conventional templates.
GaAs-based 9xx-nm broad-area diode lasers (BALs) offer the highest optical power (Popt) among diode lasers and the highest conversion efficiency (ηE) among all light sources. Therefore, they are widely used in material processing applications (e.g. metal cutting), which additionally require high beam quality (i.e. low beam parameter product BPP), typically limited in BALs along the lateral axis (BPPlat). Enhancing BAL performance is dependent on identifying the thermal and non-thermal limiting mechanisms, and implementing design changes to minimize their effects. In this work, two novel approaches based on lateral structuring are developed, aiming to overcome different limiting mechanisms acting along the lateral axis. First, the enhanced self-aligned lateral structure (eSAS) is based on integrating structured current-blocking layers outside the BAL stripe to centrally confine current and charge carriers, thereby suppressing lateral current spreading and lateral carrier accumulation. Two eSAS variants are optimized using simulation tools, then realized in multiple wafer processes, followed by characterization of mounted BALs. eSAS BALs exhibit state-of-the-art Popt and lateral brightness (Popt/BPPlat), with clear benefits over standard gain-guided BALs in terms of threshold, BPPlat and peak ηE. The second approach is chip-internal thermal path engineering, based on structured epitaxial layers replaced outside the stripe by heat-blocking materials to centrally confine heat flow. This flattens the lateral temperature profile (i.e. reduces thermal lensing) around the active zone, which is associated with enhanced brightness. Finite-element thermal simulations are used to estimate the benefits of this approach, thereby motivating its practical realization in future studies.
This work focuses on the development of AlGaAs-based diode laser (DL) bars optimized for reaching highest powers and efficiencies at low operation temperatures. Specifically, the quasi continuous wave (QCW) pumping of cryogenically cooled Yb:YAG solid-state lasers is targeted, setting requirements on the wavelength (940 nm), the pulse conditions (pulse length 1.2 ms) and frequency (10 Hz) as well as the lowest DL operating temperature THS ~ 200 K, consistent with economic cooling. High fill-factor bars for QCW operation are to reach high optical performance with optical output powers of P  1.5 kW and power conversion efficiencies of ŋE  60% at these power levels. Understanding the efficiency-limiting factors and the behavior at lower temperatures is necessary to design these devices. Optimizations are performed iteratively in three stages. First, vertical epitaxial designs are studied theoretically, adjusted to the targeted operation temperatures and specific laser parameters are extracted. Secondly, resulting vertical designs are processed into low power single emitters and their electro-optical behavior at low currents is experimentally assessed over a wide range of temperatures. The obtained laser parameters characteristic to the vertical design are then used to extrapolate the laser's performance up to the high targeted currents. Finally, vertical designs promising to reach the targeted values for power and efficiency are processed into high power single emitters and bars which are measured up to the highest currents. Eventually, laser bars are fabricated reaching output powers of 2 kW and efficiencies of 61% at 1.5 kW at an operation temperature of 203 K.