Abstract

In this letter we report the highest room-temperature cw output power of 52 W from a 1 cm monolithic diode laser array (2 mm aperture width) with no active cooling. The devices investigated have 20 ten-stripe lasers spaced on 500 μm centers, each occupying 100 μm of the facet length. The laser structures were grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and employed single quantum well separate confinement heterostructures. The wafers were processed to form gain-guided 6 μm-wide stripes on 10 μm centers defined by proton bombardment. Completed devices were tested under cw conditions. Several approached 50 W cw and the best laser attained 52 W before catastrophic degradation of the facet. The threshold current was 6 A and the slope efficiency was 0.89 W/A (57% differential quantum efficiency) up to approximately 40 W of optical power. The driving current required to attain output power of 52 W was 72 A. The electrical-to-optical power conversion efficiency attained 36% for an output power of 22 W and was 28% at 52 W.

© 1988 Optical Society of America