Recent developments in high power 2.3-2.4 mgr;m diode lasers

摘要

Mid-infrared light emitters capable of room temperature continuous-wave (CW) operation are in demand for variety of applications ranging from medical diagnostics to missile countermeasures. Room temperature type-I quantum-well (QW) GaSb-based lasers, laser arrays and light emitting diodes operating in the spectral range from below 2 to over 3&mgr;m have been reported. The maximum CW output power from 1cm-wide 2.35&mgr;m linear laser array was 10 W, in quasi-CW operation (30 &mgr;s pulse, 300 Hz pulse repetition frequency) the maximum measured power is 18.5 W. In short pulse operation heating is negligible, and the light-current characteristics remains linear to beyond 20 W at 100 A.