Reliability of aluminium-free 980 nm lasers

Aluminium based pump lasers at 980 nm are commercially available but there are still some doubts about the long term reliability of these lasers. Al-free GaInAs-GaInAsP-GaInP ridge waveguide pump laser emitting at 980 nm would have similar materials as 1480 nm pump lasers and could thus potentially offer similar lifetime performance. However, there has been only few reports on high power Al-free pump lasers at 980 nm and their threshold power density for catastrophic optical damage (COD) of the mirror facet is not proven to be superior to Al-based pump lasers