Experimental Analysis of Laser Diode Thermal Characteristics by Voltage Transient Measurements

This communication deals with a new technique for completely characterizing the equivalent thermal circuit of a laser diode and its assembling structure. This method is able to give informations about the thermal resistances and capacitances of the various parts of the whole solid composed by the laser diode, the solder layer and copper submount. Experiments performed on BRS and DFB lasers have shown the ability of the method to reveal the solder uniformity defects which cause an increase of the total thermal resistance.