Abstract

The reliability of single-mode laser diodes is critical for many applications, including telecommunications, atomic clocks, and optical data storage. Research into laser failure mechanisms and methods for reliability improvement has rapidly increased in recent years. In many laser diode research efforts, broad area devices have been examined, occasionally under pulsed operation. The low optical power and current densities of broad area laser diodes significantly eases the task of producing reliable laser diodes. Therefore, these tests are of limited utility for understanding the reliability capability of modern semiconductor lasers. The toughest test of laser diode reliability is the operation of high-power single-mode laser diodes, where operating powers as high as 200 mW are commercially available from emitting apertures as small as 3 μm by 1 μm, leading to facet optical densities of ~7 × 10⁶ W/cm² with operating current densities of ~10 kA/cm². In this presentation, three classes of single-mode laser diodes are examined, AlGaAs single-mode lasers (780–880 nm), strained-layer AIGaInAs (980 nm) single-mode lasers, and re-grown AlGaAs (852 nm) distributed Bragg reflector single-mode lasers.

© 1995 IEEE