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A high peak power annularly-stacked laser diode pump has been designed and manufactured for a solid state laser (SSL), which is constructed by 12 single annular stacks composed of 3-bar laser diode (LD) submodules. High peak power and high wavelength uniformity have been considered. Macro channel cooling has been used during the operation of the annular stacks, at typical coolant flow rate of 2L/min. Heat dissipation and stress of a single annular stack have been simulated by finite element software, which shows high temperature uniformity of 3-bar submodules (plus or minus 0.5℃) and low package stress (11.8MP). The peak power of the annularly stacked laser diode pump has reached 234kW at a peak current of 450A or less. A high uniformity of centroid wavelength (802 plus or minus1nm) with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 4nm has been measured. More than 24 million shots have been verified for the 3-bar LD submodules.

Due to thermal stress, each emitter in a semiconductor laser bar or array is vertically displaced along the p-n junction; the result is that each emitter is not in a line, called near-field nonlinearity. Near-field nonlinearity along a laser bar (also known as “SMILE” effect) degrades the laser beam brightness, which causes an adverse effect on optical coupling and beam shaping. A large SMILE value causes a large divergence angle after collimation and a wider line after collimation and focusing. We simulate the factors affecting the SMILE value of a high-power diode laser array on a microchannel cooler (MCC). According to the simulation results, we have fabricated a series of laser bars bonded on MCCs with lower SMILE value. After simulation and experiment analysis, we found the key factor to affect SMILE is the deformation of the thin MCC because of the distribution of strain and stress in it. We also decreased the SMILE value of 1-cm-wide full bar AuSn bonded on MCCs from 12 to 1 μm by balancing force on MCC to minimize the deformation.