High-efficiency interband cascade lasers with peak power exceeding 4 W/facet

Abstract

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Mid-IR interband cascade lasers: progress toward high performance

“…The threshold current densities of devices from ICL3 are the largest in comparison to devices from ICL1 and ICL2; however, lasers from ICL3 could be operated at temperatures up to 217 K, the highest among any III-V diode lasers at the same wavelength. Details of these results were reported elsewhere [15][16]. The most significant performance feature we observed from these IC lasers is the capability of delivering high-output-power.…”

“…Hence, a type-II IC laser can deliver considerable power at a low current in contrast to other types of mid-IR diode lasers. Combining a very efficient use of applied bias voltage in cascade structures [2,[14][15][16][17][18], power efficiencies exceeding 12% were obtained from this device at 60 and 80 K. x 100…”

“…Still higher output power is possible since we did not drive the device to saturation to avoid overheating. Compared to the values reported previously by us [15][16], these powers levels have now been corrected for beam divergence losses using a collection efficiency of ~70%, as determined from far-field measurements on one of the devices. With longer (1 µs) pulses at 1 kHz, the 200-µm-wide mesa-stripe laser (shown in Fig.…”

“…A review of early work on type-II IC emitters is given in Ref. 14. Recently, significant advances [15][16][17][18] have been made by us at ARL in the development of type-II IC lasers in terms of record-high differential quantum efficiency, peak output power, operating temperature, continuous wave (cw) operation, power conversion efficiency, and reproducibility. Here, we review our recent progress and present some updated results along with discussions of these IC lasers.…”

Beam quality of mid-infrared angled-grating distributed-feedback lasers

“…In general, the spectral linewidths for type-II mid-IR lasers tend to be rather broad, e.g., 30-50 nm or more at several times the threshold pump intensity, 8,9 although narrower lines have been observed in electrically-pumped devices. [10][11][12] This may be due to a large inhomogeneous or macroscopic 13,14 broadening of the optical gain spectrum. Internal losses also tend to be much higher than at shorter wavelengths.…”