Laser Sources

Blue High-Power Laser Diodes –

Beam Sources for Novel
Applications
Overview and outlook
Martin Behringer and Harald König

Applications for low and medium power GaN laser diode: near-to-eye projection, stagelighting, headlights and projection. Right: blue
laser in TO package (Source all images: Osram)

High-power diode lasers are possibly the most efficient way of making elec-
trical energy usable for material processing, like welding, cutting, soldering or
other high-power applications. While IR laser were invented over fifty years
ago and have been used in industry for more than two decades, GaN high-­
power lasers have only recently been used for material processing, especially
for welding and soldering of copper. Although the blue wavelength offers
unique and undisputable advantages over IR for the latter application, some
difficulties still had to be overcome. Here is an overview of the development
steps of GaN lasers from their commercial beginnings as a 1 mW light source
in Blue-ray players to today’s 1.5 kW system. Also, important investigations to
reach power efficiencies of 40 % will be explained as well as considerations to
reach lifetimes of 65 khr and longer. We also venture a prediction of future
developments based on a comparison to IR laser diodes.

The first widespread application of (<10  m thickness), waveguiding layers, are normally always biased at around
diode lasers in the IR spectral range current distribution layers and metal threshold current. The low value was
was in the seventies of the past century contacts. The chip design also has to reached by designing the mirrors to
in CD players. Similarly, the first wide- support ground-mode operation and is 99 % and 90 % reflectivity on the HR
spread applications for GaN laser diodes structured in a way that gain minus loss and AR side respectively. Single mode
was as a light source in blue-ray play- for the ground-mode is higher than for lasers with higher output power levels
ers at 405 nm thirty years later. Those higher order modes in order to enforce are often needed for range finding or
application require low output power ground-mode operation. leveling applications. An LIV curve for a
in ground-mode operation with good Also in Fig. 2, a typical LIV curve is high-power single-mode laser is shown
beam quality. Also in the low output depicted. It can be seen that a threshold in Fig. 2 on the right. It can be seen that
power range, near-to-eye applications current as low as 6 mA can be achieved the blue and the green laser diode have
for AR, VR, MR devices require sin- for a lower-power laser at 436 nm. a threshold of about 11 mA and 30 mA
gle mode lasers for red, green and blue 10 mW output power can be achieved and they reach 100 mW output power
light. Those laser dies are typically rather at an operation current of 24 mA and at 130  mA and 290  mA respectively.
small. a voltage of 4.1 V. This amounts to an This higher operation level is directly
A laser chip for single-mode emis- efficiency of about 10 %. The very low connected with the higher threshold
sion is depicted in Fig.2. It contains a threshold current is important, as those current as it was achieved by increas-
GaN substrate, epi layers that contain devices need to be operated at very high ing mirror losses by lower reflectivities
a light-generating quantum well layer pulse frequencies and therefore they on the AR-side of the resonator.

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80 6 6
240
70
5 5
200

optical output power (mW)

60
green

output power (mW)

4 160 4
50

voltage (V)

voltage (V)
3 blue 3
40 120
30
2 80 2
20
1 40 1
10
0 0 0 0
0 50 100 150 0 100 200 300
operation current (mA) current (mA)

Fig. 2 Schematic of a laser diode (left), LI curve for a low threshold (middle) and LIV for high power single mode diodes [6]

Laser diodes in the 1 – 10 W range future. For those applications, power could also be used for 450 nm systems.
were often used for IR energy transfer levels of 1 kW and beyond will be nec- While IR lasers started out with a short
or low-power soldering applications. essary. For IR lasers and laser systems, resonator length of 300  µm, narrow
Devices and packages for higher out- it took several decades to develop the emitters and smaller die, they have
put power were developed over time. semiconductor chip, but the packag- now reached 4 to 6 mm in resonator
The output power per light source over ing technology as well as the materials length and a fill factor of 70 % or more
time is shown in Fig. 3. For IR lasers, and the optics also had to be improved in 10 mm wide laser bars. Today’s GaN
1 W was achieved around 1980 and this to be able to configure multi-kW sys- lasers are far from these design features.
increased steadily to about 100 W in tems. For GaN, the development for The reason for this difference
2008 and has now reached up to 1 kW power applications started after 2000. becomes understandable when looking
per 1 cm laser bar or >300 W (cw or Progress was more rapid than for IR, as at some material parameters. Some char-
hard pulse) in commercially available many building blocks developed for IR acteristics are compared in Table 1. The
systems, manufactured in high volume.
Also for GaN laser diodes, there are
GaN GaAs
many applications that require differ-
ent output levels. This is shown in Fig. 3 Band gap 3.2 eV 1.42 eV
on the right. Today, lasers in the single Lattice constant 3.2 Å 5.6 Å
digit watts class are used for illumina- Thermal expansion coeff. 5.6 • 10–6 5.73 • 10–6
tion (by pumping a converter to con-
Activation energy p-type 200 meV (Mg) 0 meV (C 100 % ionized)
vert the 450 nm from the laser die into
Thermal conductivity 131 W/mK 46 W/mK
the desired color or into white light) or
stage and show lighting. Automotive Absorption 1– 2 / cm 0.4 / cm
headlamps that require powers in the Melting point 2500°C 1240 °C
10 W range are often used today in high- Surface Hardness 1200 – 1700 kg / mm² 750 kg / mm²
end vehicles. Future applications such
Mobility (hole) <100 cm² / Vs ~200 cm² / Vs
as projection in a business environment
Peak Efficiency LD ~50 % ~70 %
or in a cinema start becoming interest-
ing at power levels of about 100 W per T0 110 K ~200 K
package, and even material processing T1 >600 K ~400 K
methods such as cutting, welding and
soldering will be possible in the near Tab. 1 Comparison of material parameters for GaAs and GaN

1000 1000 W
materials
processing
ed lasers Fig. 3
100 infrar cinema
projection Development of
output power (W)

100 W business output powers for

10 projection IR GaAs and visible
rs

light emitting GaN-

lase

1 automotive based diode laser

blue

10 W
headlamps chips and packag-
es. Applications for
0,1
GaN Lasers with
illumination different power
1W show laser
0,01 levels, data from
1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 existing emerging future [1…5]

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 Laser Sources

120 4.5 70
4 60
100
3.5
50
optical output power (W)

conversion efficiency (%)

80 blue laser bar 3
2.5 40

voltage (V)
60
2 30
40 1.5
20
1
20 10
IR laser bar 0.5
0 0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
current (A) current (A) current (A)

Fig. 4 LI, UI, and efficiency over current for blue and IR laser bars. [5]

first most obvious difference is the band- is much shorter, compared to less than because GaN is a material with a higher
gap. While GaAs has a bandgap in the 0.5 per cm in high-power GaAs lasers, dislocation density than GaAs. It was
IR range with about 1.42 eV, GaN has a due to their higher absorption. This all assumed that a single emitter failure
high bandgap of 3.42 eV. This difference contributes to a rather low value for T0 would cause catastrophic failure as had
is unavoidable when one needs a differ- which describes the change of thresh- been observed for GaAs laser bars in the
ent wavelength. The different activation old current with temperature. A small past. As the operating voltage depends
energies for p-type dopants, the hole value of 110 indicates that a higher oper- on temperature as well, inefficient oper-
mobilities, the absorption coefficients ation temperature results in a quicker ation of one emitter on a bar influences
for light in the laser resonator and the and more drastic increase of threshold the neighboring emitters and thermal
characteristic temperature T0 all have current compared to the higher value runaway had to be prevented by ther-
further technical consequences. of 200 in the case of GaAs high-power mally decoupling the individual emit-
Due to the high activation energy, lasers. The high values of T1 for both ters as much as possible. All this made
only a small fraction of the incorporated GaAs and GaN devices indicate that it possible to realize GaN laser bars.
Mg actually acts as a dopant, resulting the slope efficiency depends very little In Fig. 4, the LI, UI and WPE over
in many Mg atoms, which disturb the on temperature. Both together describe operation current curves for a blue and
lattice and increase absorption, but do that GaN laser diodes react more sensi- an IR laser bar with identical resona-
not improve carrier density and con- tively to higher operating temperatures tor length are shown. While in the left
ductivity. In GaAs, carbon is often used and output power degrades faster with picture, the output power of the blue
as p-type dopant. This is 100 % ion- temperature at a given operating cur- bar with 85 W at 50 A is much higher
ized, which means that all carbon that rent. than for the IR laser (47 W) , it becomes
is included contributes to high doping Some very basic problems had to be obvious that this is only due to the wider
and low resisitivity. Similarly, the hole overcome to be able to make and oper- band gap and results in a much higher
mobility in GaAs is about twice as high ate GaN bars in the very beginning. For operating voltage of 4.1 V compared to
as in GaN, resulting in lower electrical a long time, the substrate quality was 1.5 V for the IR laser bar. This results
resistivities and therefore lower electri- not good enough. As laser bars are very in a lower wall plug efficiency of only
cal losses, even at lower impurity den- big devices a low defect density of the 40 % at 50 A compared to > 60 % (right
sities of C in GaAs compared to Mg in substrate is mandatory. Also the crys- picture of Fig. 4).
GaN. tal quality of the epi-layers had to be For IR diodes, the strategy over the
The optimum resonator length of improved. For a long time it was con- past few years was to reduce absorp-
1.2 per cm in GaN-based laser diodes sidered impossible to make laser bars tion, increase contact size with an

Company
OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH 120 60
1
OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH, a 100 % 100 50
conversion efficiency (%)

subsidiary of the OSRAM Licht AG, has more than 0.8

optical output power (W)

80 40
forty years of expertise in research, development
intensity (a.u.)

0.6
and production of optical semiconductor compo- 60 30
nents. The major activities are focused on visible 20 0.4
40
and infrared light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and pow-
20 10 0.2
er lasers, based on the materials InAlGaP, InAlGaN
and InAlGaAs. OSRAM Opto Semiconductors has 0 0 0
full in-house production capabilities, consisting of 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 415 425 435 445 455
facilities for epitaxy, chip processing and device current (A) wavelength (nm)
packaging.
www.osram-os.com Fig. 5 LI and WPE curve for a 1 cm laser bar 450 nm [6] (left), spectra of laser bars for
various wavelengths at different operation currents [5] (right).

62 PhotonicsViews 2/2020 © 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
 www.photonicsviews.com

increased fill factor and increased res- cation and Research (BMBF) within the 90 %
Cu

1064 nm
450 nm
onator length, and further reduce ohmic EFFILAS Photonic Research Program 80 %
losses by reducing electrical resistivity. is gratefully acknowledged (contract 70 %
High output powers of > 300 W for cw number FKZ 13N13900) [11]. Au
operation in commercial applications 60 % 300
DOI: 10.1002/phvs.202000018

absorption (1-R)
are state-of-the-art today. GaN lasers 50 %
in contrast cannot be made with long 40 %
[1] T. Hager, U. Strauss, C. Eichler et al.:
resonators while optical absorption in Power blue and green laser diodes and 30 %
the devices is high. Similarly, the fill fac- their applications, Proc. SPIE 8640,
tor cannot be increased as this leads to 864015 (2013). 20 %
high threshold currents. Therefore, dif- [2] A. Löffler, C. Eichler, J. Müller et al.: In- 10 %
ferent material parameters must be fur- GaN power laser chips in a novel 50W
multi-die package, Proc. SPIE 9363,
0%
ther improved before additional design 300 500 700 900 1100 1300 1500
936318 (2015).
opportunities can be realized. [3] A. Balck, M. Baumann, J. Malchuset al.: wavelength (nm)
Today’s GaN laser bars for 450 nm 700 W blue Fiber-coupled Diode-laser
Fig. 6 Absorption spectrum for copper Cu and gold Au.
emission exhibit fill factors below 10 % emitting at 450 nm, Proc. SPIE 10514, [6] and data from [7]
(to keep threshold current low and 1051403 (2018).
allow efficient cooling) and have res- [4] A. Balck, M. Baumann, J. Malchus et al.:
1000 W blue fiber-coupled diode-laser
onator lengths up to 1200 µm to avoid emitting at 450 nm, Proc. SPIE 10900,
absorption induced low slope efficien- [8] J.-M. Pelaprat, M. Zediker, M. Finuf, and
10900-3 (2019). R. Fritz: The Blue Light District, Photon-
cies. Mounted on a water-cooled micro- [5] H. König, A. Lell, B. Stojetz et al.: Blue icsViews 17 (2020) 1, 61, DOI:10.1002/
channel cooler, they can be operated up 450 nm high power semiconductor con- phvs.202000005
to output powers of above 107 W before tinuous wave laser bars exceeding rollover [9] S. Britten and V. Krause: Industrial
output power of 80W, Proc. SPIE 10514,
thermal roll over, with peak efficien- Blue Diode Laser Breaks 1 kW Barrier,
1051402 (2018) PhotonicsViews 16 (2019) 2, 30, DOI:
cies of ~44 % (Fig. 5, left). As can be [6] H. König, U. Strauss, M. Ali et al.: Visible 10.1002/phvs.201900017
seen in Fig. 5, right, the material com- GaN laser diodes: from lowest thresholds [10] M. Rütering: Hybrid Solution Moves
bination of AlGaInN offers the pos- to highest power levels, Proc. SPIE 10939, Boundariesof Copper Welding Photon-
sibility to adjust to different emission 109390C (2019) icsViews 16 (2019) 5, 46, DOI: 10.1002/
wavelengths, which is a requirement for [7] E. W. Spisz, A. J. Weigand, R. L. Bowman: phvs.201900044
Solar absorptances and spectral reflec- [11] www.effilas.de
wavelength multiplexing.
tances of 12 metals for temperatures rang-
Today, laser diodes based on GaN ing from 300 to 500 K, NASA TN D-5353,
for the emission of 450 nm light still (1969).
exhibit low efficiency and lower total
output power than comparable sys-
tems based on GaAs for IR laser light
sources. In addition, production costs
Authors
are still much higher as components are Dr. Martin Dr. Harald König is
more expensive and production yield Behringer was principal key expert
for this rather new material system is born in Würzburg, on chip design
low. Nevertheless, they offer the unique Germany, in 1967. for laser diodes
advantage that some materials absorb He received his PhD at Osram Opto
IR light rather poorly while the absorp- from the University Semiconductors.
tion of blue or UV light is good, as can of Bremen in 1998 He received his PhD
be seen in Fig. 6. on “MBE growth of from Würzburg
Several companies have success- ZnSe-based laser University (Ger-
fully incorporated GaN laser diodes for diodes and their characterisation”. many) on 1.55-µm InP DFB laser
450 nm emission in systems with more He joined Siemens HL / Osram Opto diodes for telecommunication. In 1999
Semiconductors in October 1998. he joined Osram OS and held different
the 1 kW output power [8-10]. Those
After working on the development of project leader and managing positions
lasers are designed for heavy material
high-power laser bars and packages, in laser diode manufacturing and laser
processing using the superior absorption
he led the LED chip development and R&D groups. He gained more than
of blue light. All blue and hybrid systems research of the first phosphid, arsenid twenty years of experience in semicon-
have already proven their better perfor- and later nitride LEDs. Since December ductor laser diodes ranging from InP
mance over pure IR systems in several 2018, he is responsible for chip devel- telecom lasers, GaAs high-power laser
applications. It must be expected that fur- opment of diode lasers. diodes to visible lasers based on GaN.
ther applications will prove advantageous Recently he coordinated a German
in quality, and with a steady reduction of government-funded project “blaulas”,
costs and improvements in output power which was dedicated to kW blue lasers
and efficiency, more and more systems for materials processing.
will use GaN diodes as their light source.
* Dr. Martin Behringer, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH, Leibnizstr. 4, 93055 Regensburg, Germany, e-mail:
The support for part of this work by [email protected] , Web: www.osram-os.com
the German Federal Ministry for Edu-

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