Benefits of Quantum Well Intermixing in High Power Diode Lasers

Quantum well intermixing (QWI) can bring considerable benefits to the reliability and performance of high power laser diodes by intermixing the facet regions of the device to increase the band-gap and hence eliminate absorption, avoiding catastrophic optical damage (COD). The non-absorbing mirror (NAM) regions of the laser cavity can be up to ~20% of the cavity length, giving an additional benefit on cleave tolerances, to fabricate very large element arrays of high power, individually addressable, single mode lasers. As a consequence, large arrays of single mode lasers can bring additional benefits for packaging in terms of hybrization and integration into an optics system. Our QWI techniques have been applied to a range of material systems, including GaAs/AlGaAs, (Al)GaAsP/AlGaAs and InGaAs/GaAs