Modified Thermal-divergence Model for a High-power Laser Diode

Abstract

The design and control of thermal flow is important for the operation of high-power laser diodes (LDs). It is necessary to analyze and improve the thermal bottleneck near the active layer of an LD. As the error in prediction of the thermal resistance of an LD is large, typically due to the hyperbolic increase and saturation to linear increase of the thermal resistance as a function of thickness, it is helpful to use a simple, modified divergence model for the improvement and optimization of thermal resistance. The characteristics of LDs are described quite well, in that the values for simulated thermal resistance curves and the thermal cross section followed are almost the same as the values from the model function. Also, the thermal-cross-section curve obtained by differentiating the thermal resistance is good for identifying thermal bottlenecks intuitively, and is also fitted quite well by the model proposed for both a typical LD structure and an improved LD with thin capping and high thermal conductivity.