DC 5-MHz 100-A laser-diode driver

Yankov, P.; Todorov, Dimitar

doi:10.1117/12.578425

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…However, QCW LD drivers with fast rising/falling times, high voltages, and high current outputs are challenging to implement using only SMPS techniques, and the relevant literature is quite limited. The common practice is to split a QCW LD driver into two parts [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. The first part is the SMPS, which provides the AC-to-DC voltage conversion, and to accumulate sufficient energy before generating a pulse current, a capacitor bank of tens to hundreds of microfarad is essential.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Load-Adaptive Driving Method for a Quasi-Continuous-Wave Laser Diode

Wu,

Liu,

Sun

et al. 2024

Micromachines

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A quasi-continuous-wave (QCW) laser diode (LD) driver is commonly used to drive diode bars and stacks designed specifically for QCW operations in solid-state lasers. Such drivers are optimized to deliver peak current and voltage pulses to LDs while maintaining low average power levels. As a result, they are widely used in laser processing devices and laser instruments. Traditional high-energy QCW LD drivers primarily use capacitors as energy storage components and pulsed constant-current sources with op-amps and power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) as their core circuits for generating repeated constant-current pulses. The drawback of this type of driver is that the driver’s output voltage needs to be manually adjusted according to the operating voltage of the load before use to maximize driver efficiency while providing a sufficient current. Another drawback is its inability to automatically adjust the output voltage to maintain high efficiency when the load changes during the driver operation. Drastic changes in the load can cause the driver to fail to function properly in extreme cases. Based on the above traditional circuit structure, this study designed a stability compensation circuit and realized a QCW LD driver for driving a GS20 diode stack with a maximum repetition rate of 100 Hz, a constant current of approximately 300 A, a load voltage of approximately 10 V, and a pulse width of approximately 300 μs. In particular, a high-efficiency, load-adaptive driving method was used with the MOSFETs in the critical saturation region (i.e., between the linear and saturated regions), controlling its power loss effectively while achieving maximum output current of the driver. The experiments demonstrated that the driver efficiency could be maintained at more than 80% when the load current varied from 50 to 300 A.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%