Improving temperature characteristics of GaN-based ultraviolet laser diodes by using InGaN/AlGaN quantum wells.

Temperature characteristics of GaN-based laser diodes are investigated. It is noted that the characteristic temperature of the threshold current (T0) decreases with decreasing lasing wavelength for GaN-based LDs. The performance deteriorates seriously for UV LDs at high temperature. It is ascribed to the increase of carriers escaping from quantum wells due to the lower potential barrier height. In this Letter, AlGaN is used as the barrier layer in UV LDs instead of GaN to improve the temperature characteristic of the threshold current and slope efficiency by increasing the potential barrier height of quantum wells. Based on this structure, a high output power of 4.6 W is obtained at the injection current of 3.8 A; its lasing wavelength is 386.8 nm.

Room temperature continuous-wave operated 2.0-W GaN-based ultraviolet laser diodes.

Temperature characteristics of near-UV laser diodes (LDs) with a lasing wavelength of 384 nm are investigated. The characteristic temperature of threshold current (T0) of the UV LDs is low. Thus, the performance of the UV LDs under continuous wave (CW) operation is not as good as under pulsed operation especially at a high injection current. In addition, it is found that self-heating is a key factor for CW characteristics of the UV LDs, where suppression of the self-heating by using thick waveguide layers can increase the critical current of thermal rollover of the UV LD's operation. A high CW output power of 2.0 W is achieved for an InGaN near-UV LD with the n-side down on a sub-mount, whose threshold current density is 1.27 kA/cm2 and the highest wall plug efficiency (WPE) is approximately 15.9% at an injection current of 1.2 A.