Design and screening of highly reliable 980-nm pump lasers

Presents a design and screening approach that can be adopted to improve reliability of high-power 980-nm semiconductor lasers. Flared-ridge waveguide chips were realized on GRIN-SCH single-quantum-well structures. Without any screening, flared devices, thanks to the reduced peak power and current density, showed a 20% reduction in failure rate with respect to devices with straight waveguide. By adopting extended screening criteria, a more reliable population was selected, showing a reduction by a factor of two in the failure rate extrapolated at standard operating conditions.