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“About 10 years ago, the best laser bars achieved a power of 200W with an efficiency of about 63%,” according to Osram. “Five years later, an output of 250W at an efficiency of no less than 60% was expected to be the limit of what could be achieved with the existing technologies.”
Run at 300W, the new device can achieve 70% efficiency at between 1,000 and 1,020nm.
It has come out of the EKOLAS project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and under the umbrella of the EffiLAS photonics association – from which the project partners drew on experience in materials science, epitaxy simulation and facet technology.
Osram worked with Laserline, Heraeus, Fraunhofer ILT, fiberware and Welser Profile on the laser bar.
“The key to success was the development of software tools for simulating the electro-optical properties of the lasers, which take into account the thermal distribution, temperature-dependent material properties and mode-dependent wave propagation in the resonator,” said Osram EKOLAS manager Sebastian Hein. “These tools considerably accelerated and simplified the necessary test runs, making a fundamental contribution to the results of the project.”
Knowledge gaind in simulation will now be applied to devices between 800 and 1,060nm.
