Highly Reliable Operation of Red Laser Diodes for POF Data Links

摘要

Plastic optical fibers (POF) with poly methyl methacrylate cores, which have a local attenuation minimum at 650 nm, have attracted interest for low-cost communication systems. GaInP/AlGaInP red laser diodes are suitable for optical communication using POF. GalnP/AlGalnP red lasers are widely used as light sources in digital versatile disk (DVD), laser pointers, barcode readers, and laser printers. In particular, in recordable DVD systems, higher-power red laser diodes have been required as light sources for higher-speed and larger-memory-capacity optical disks, and development efforts for higher-power operation are actively underway. On the other hand, long lifetime over 100,000 hours is required as light sources for optical communication with a relatively low output power. However, commercially available red laser diodes for DVD do not meet this requirement.