Thermal management of VECSEL-GaAs for high-power single-mode emission
Résumé
Information and communication technologies have revolutionized our world and reshaped our industries. Vertical emission in external cavity lasers (VECSEL) combine simultaneously high-power and highly coherent tunable single-frequency laser emission. VECSELs are promising candidates for various applications such as transmitter, sensors, ….
In our study,we are interested in reducing the thermal impedance of our ½ VECSELs on GaAs substrate, emitting between 800 and 1100nm. Part of the power of the optical pump is converted into a significant heating of the component [see Fig. 1(a)]. This heating reduces the gain of the QWs and induces a shift of the emission wavelength towards longer wavelengths [1]. In the literature, many strategies to improve the heat dissipation for ½ VECSEL are proposed [2][3]. In our case, our approach is to integrate a heat sink as close a possible to the Bragg mirror [see Fig. 1(b)] by dry etching and electrolytic metal growth. As a first step, we studied both the diameter of the aperture and the metal material to be used in order to have a good mechanical stability of the semiconductor structure while ensuring a very good heat dissipation .
References:
[1] M. Devautour et al. IEEE Journ. of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, VOL. 19, No. 4 (2013).
[2] R. Sheikhi et al. Science Direct. Volume194, 15 March 2021, 113628
[3] G. Hou et al. IEEE Photonics Journal, Volume 11, Number 2, April 2019