4.6 Watt Eye-Safe 1500 nm Laser Diode with Low Linewidth Enhancement Factor

This proposal is based on high-power, high-efficiency, low threshold current, broadened waveguide (BW) separate confinement heterostructure (SCH) laser diodes recently demonstrated by Professor Forrest's group at Princeton University (1,2,3). These lasers achieved extraordinarily high power outputs:4.6W in CW operation from a 200um aperture BW-SCH 1500nm InGaAsP/InP laser diodes:13.3W in quasi-continuous-wave (QCW) operation and 6.8W in CW operation from a 100 micron aperture BW-SCH 980nm InGaAs/(In)GaAs(p)/InGaP laser diodes.The BW-SCH devices employ comprehensive strain multi-quantum well (MQW) structures known to reduce the linewidth enhancement factor (4.5). Furthermore these devices achieve high power output power at relatively narrow aperture, thus producing a high quality, non-filamentary beam, suitable for collimation and/or fiber coupling (2). We plan to produce a fully packaged prototype device emitting several watts of power in a well collimated beam.We thus believe that this proposal matches very well the objective of the solicitation AF98-039, which is stated as wavelengths by designing and using structures that have reduced linewidth enhancement factor (Alpha).