This reference book provides a fully integrated novel approach to
the development of high-power, single-transverse mode,
edge-emitting diode lasers by addressing the complementary topics
of device engineering, reliability engineering and device
diagnostics in the same book, and thus closes the gap in the
current book literature.
Diode laser fundamentals are discussed, followed by an elaborate
discussion of problem-oriented design guidelines and techniques,
and by a systematic of the origins of laser degradation
and a thorough exploration of the engineering means to enhance
the optical strength of the laser. Stability criteria of critical
laser characteristics and key laser robustness factors are
discussed along with clear design considerations in the context
of reliability engineering approaches and models, and typical
programs for reliability tests and laser product qualifications.
Novel, advanced diagnostic methods are reviewed to discuss, for
the first time in detail in book literature, performance- and
reliability-impacting factors such as temperature, stress and
material instabilities.
Further key features include:
* practical design guidelines that consider also reliability
related effects, key laser robustness factors, basic laser
fabrication and packaging issues;
* detailed discussion of diagnostic investigations of diode
lasers, the fundamentals of the applied approaches and
techniques, many of them pioneered by the author to be
fit-for-purpose and novel in the application;
* systematic in into laser degradation modes such as
catastrophic optical damage, and a wide range of technologies to
increase the optical strength of diode lasers;
* coverage of basic concepts and techniques of laser reliability
engineering with details on a standard commercial high power
laser reliability test program.
Semiconductor Laser Engineering, Reliability and Diagnostics
reflects the extensive expertise of the author in the diode laser
field both as a top scientific researcher as well as a key
developer of high-power highly reliable devices. With invaluable
practical advice, this new reference book is suited to practising
researchers in diode laser technologies, and to postgraduate
engineering students.
Dr. Peter W. Epperlein is Technology Consultant with his own
semiconductor technology consulting business
Pwe-PhotonicsElectronics-IssueResolution in the UK. He looks back
at a thirty years career in cutting edge photonics and
electronics industries with focus on emerging technologies, both
in global and start-up companies, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard,
Agilent Technologies, Philips/NXP, Essient Photonics and IBM/JDSU
Laser Enterprise. He holds Pre-Dipl. (B.Sc.), Dipl. Phys. (M.Sc.)
and Dr. rer. nat. (Ph.D.) degrees in physics, magna cum laude,
from the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Dr. Epperlein is an internationally recognized expert in
compound semiconductor and diode laser technologies. He has
accomplished R&D in many device areas such as semiconductor
lasers, LEDs, optical modulators, quantum well devices, resonant
tunneling devices, FETs, and superconducting tunnel junctions and
integrated circuits. His pioneering work on sophisticated
diagnostic research has led to many world’s first reports and has
been adopted by other researchers in academia and industry. He
authored more than seventy peer-reviewed journal papers,
published more than ten invention disclosures in the IBM
Technical Disclosure Bulletin, has served as reviewer of numerous
proposals for publication in technical journals, and has won five
IBM Research Division Awards. His key achievements include the
design and fabrication of high-power, highly reliable, single
mode diode lasers.
Book Reviews
“Semiconductor Laser Engineering, Reliability and Diagnostics: A
Practical Approach to High Power and Single Mode Devices”. By
Peter W. Epperlein
Prof. em. Dr. Heinz Jäckel, High Speed Electronics and
Photonics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich,
Switzerland
The book “Semiconductor Laser Engineering, Reliability and
Diagnostics” by Dr. P.W. Epperlein is a landmark in the recent
literature on semiconductor lasers because it fills a
longstanding gap between many excellent books on laser theory and
the complex and challenging endeavor to fabricate these devices
reproducibly and reliably in an industrial, real world
environment.
Having worked myself in the early research and development of
high power semiconductor lasers, I appreciate the competent,
complete and skillful presentation of these three highly
interrelated topics, where small effects have dramatic
consequences on the success of a final product, on the ultimate
performance and on the stringent reliability requirements, which
are the name of the game.
As the title suggests the author addresses three tightly
interwoven and critical topics of state-of-the-art power laser
research. The three parts are: device and mode stability
engineering (chapter 1, 2), reliability mechanisms and
reliability assessment strategies (chapter 3, 4, 5, 6) and
finally material and device diagnostics (chapter 7, 8, 9) all
treated with a strong focus on the implementation. This emphasis
on the complex practical aspects for a large-scale power laser
fabrication is a true highlight of the book.
The subtle interplay between laser design, reliability
strategies, advanced failure analysis and characterization
techniques are elaborated in a very rigorous and scientific way
using a very clear and easy to read representation of the complex
interrelation of the three major topics. I will abstain from
trying to provide a complete account of all the topics but mainly
concentrate on the numerous highlights.
The first part 1 “Laser Engineering” is divided in two chapters
on basic electronic-optical, structural, material and resonator
laser engineering on the one side, and on single mode control and
stability at very high, still reliable power-levels with the
trade-off between mirror damage, single mode stability on the
other side. To round up the picture less well-known concepts and
the state-of-the-art of large-area lasers, which can be forced
into single-mode operation, are reviewed carefully. The subtle
and complex interplay, which is challenging to optimize for a
design for reliability and low stress as a major boundary
condition is crucial for the design. The section gives a rather
complete and well-referenced account of all relevant aspects,
relations and trade-offs for understanding the rest of the book.
The completeness of the presentation on power laser diode design
based on basic physical and plausible arguments is mainly based
on analytic mathematical relations as well as experiments
providing a new and well-balanced addition for the power diode
laser literature in particular. Modern 2D self-consistent
electro-optical laser modeling including carrier hole burning and
thermal effects – this is important because the weak optical
guiding and gain-discrimination depend critically on rather small
quantities and effects, which are difficult to optimize
experimentally – is used in the book for simulation results, but
is not treated separately.
The novel and really original, “gap-filling” bulk of the book is
elaborated by the author in a very clear way in the following
four chapters in the part 2 “Laser Reliability” on laser
degradation physics and mirror design and passivation at high
power, followed then by two very application oriented chapters on
reliability design engineering and practical reliability
strategies and implementation procedures. This original
combination of integral design and reliability aspects – which
are mostly neglected in standard literature – is certainly a
major plus of this book. I liked this second section as a whole,
because it provides excellent ins in degradation physics on
a high level and combines it in an interesting and skillful way
with the less “glamorous” (unfortunately) but highly relevant
reliability science and testing strategies, which is particularly
important for devices operating at extreme optical stresses with
challenging lifetime requirements in a real word environment.
Finally, the last part 3 “Laser Diagnostics” comprising three
chapters, is devoted mainly to advanced experimental diagnostics
techniques for material integrity, mechanical stress, deep level
defects, various dynamic laser degradation effects, surface- and
interface quality, and most importantly heating and disordering
of mirrors and mirror coatings. The topics of characterization
techniques comprising micro-Raman- and
micro-thermoreflectance-probing, 2K photoluminescence
spectroscopy, micro-electroluminescence and photoluminescence
scanning, and deep-level-transient spectroscopy have been
pioneered by the author for the specific applications over many
years guaranteeing many competent and well represented ins.
These techniques are brilliantly discussed and the information
distributed in many articles by the author has been successfully
unified in a book form.
In my personal judgment and liking, I consider the parts 2 and 3
on reliability and diagnostics as the most valuable and true
novel contribution of the book, which in combination with the
extremely well-covered laser design of part 1 clearly fill the
gap in the current diode laser literature, which in this detail
has certainly been neglected in the past.
In summary, I can highly recommend this excellent,
well-organized and clearly written book to readers who are
already familiar with basic diode laser theory and who are active
in the academic and industrial fabrication and characterization
of semiconductor lasers. Due to its completeness, it also serves
as an excellent reference of the current state-of-the-art in
reliability engineering and device and material diagnostics.
Needless to mention that the quality of the book, its
representations and methodical structure meet the highest
expectation and are certainly a tribute from the long and broad
experience of the author in academic laser science and the
industrial commercialization of high power diode lasers.
In my opinion, this book was a pleasure to read and due to its
quality and relevance deserves a large audience in the power
diode laser community!
Prof. em. Dr. Heinz Jäckel, High Speed Electronics and
Photonics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich,
Switzerland
June 16, 2013
==========================================
“Semiconductor Laser Engineering, Reliability and Diagnostics: A
Practical Approach to High Power and Single Mode Devices”. By
Peter W. Epperlein
Dr. Chung-en Zah, Research Director, Semiconductor Technologies
Research, S&T Division, Corning Incorporate, Corning NY, USA
This book covers for the first time the three closely
interrelated key laser areas of engineering (design), reliability
and diagnostics in one book, written by the well-known
practitioner in cutting-edge optoelectronics industries, Dr.
Peter W. Epperlein. The book closes the gap in the current book
literature and is thus a unique and excellent example of how to
merge design, reliability and diagnostics aspects in a very
professional, profound and complete manner. All physical and
technological principles, concepts and practical aspects required
for developing and fabricating highly-reliable high-power
single-mode laser products are precisely specified and skilfully
formulated along with all the necessary equations, figures,
tables and worked-out examples making it easy to follow through
the nine chapters. Hence, this unique book is a milestone in the
diode laser literature and is an excellent reference book not
only for diode laser researchers and engineers, but also diode
laser users.
The engineering part starts with a very informative and clear,
well-presented account of all necessary basic diode laser types,
principles, parameters and characteristics for an easy and quick
understanding of laser functionality within the context of the
book. Along with an elaborate and broad discussion of relevant
laser material systems, applications, typical output powers,
power-limiting factors and reliability tradeoffs, basic
fabrication and packaging technologies, this excellent
introductory section is well suited to become quickly and easily
familiar with practical aspects and issues of diode laser
technologies. Of special importance and high usefulness is the
first analytic and quantitative discussion in a book on issues of
coupling laser power into optical single mode fibers. The second
section discusses in a well-balanced, competent and skilful way
waveguide topics such as basic high-power design approaches,
transverse vertical and lateral waveguide concepts, stability of
the fundamental transverse lateral mode and fundamental mode
waveguide optimization techniques by considering detrimental
effects such as heating, carrier injection, spatial hole burning,
lateral current spreading and gain profile variations. Less
well-known approaches to force large-area lasers into a single
mode operation are well-identified and carefully discussed in
depth and breadth. All these topics are elaborated in a very
complete, rigorous and scientific way and are clearly articulated
and easy to read. In particular, the book works out the complex
interaction between the many different effects to optimize
high-power single-mode performance at ultimate reliability and
thus is of great benefit to every researcher and engineer engaged
in this diode laser field.
Another novelty and highlight is, for the first time ever in
book form, a comprehensive yet concise discussion of diode laser
reliability related issues. These are elaborated in four distinct
chapters comprising laser degradation physics and modes, optical
strength enhancement approaches including mirror
passivation/coating and non-absorbing mirror technologies,
followed by two highly relevant product-oriented chapters on
reliability design engineering concepts and techniques and an
elaborate reliability test plan for laser chip and module product
qualification. This original and novel approach to link laser
design to reliability aspects and requirements provides both,
most useful in into degradation processes such as
catastrophic optical mirror damage on a microscopic scale, and a
wide selection of effective remedial actions. These accounts,
which are of highest significance for lasers operating at the
optical stress limit due to extremely high output power densities
and most demanding lifetime requirements are very professionally
prepared and discussed in an interesting, coherent and skilful
manner.
The diagnostics part, consisting of three very elaborate
chapters, is most unique and novel with respect to other diode
laser books. It discusses for the first time ever on a very high
level and in a competent way studies on material integrity,
impurity trapping effects, mirror and cavity temperatures,
surface- and interface quality, mirror facet disorder effects,
mechanical stress and facet coating instability, and diverse
laser temperature effects, dynamic laser degradation effects and
mirror temperature s. Of highest significance to design,
performance and reliability are the various correlations
established between laser device and material parameters. The
most different and sophisticated experiments, carried out by the
author at micrometer spatial resolutions and at temperatures as
low as 2K, provide highly valuable ins into laser and
material quality parameters, and reveal for the first time the
origins of high power limitations on an atomic scale due to local
heating effects and deep level defects. It is of great benefit,
that the experimental techniques such as Raman spectroscopy,
various luminescence techniques, thermoreflectance and deep-level
transient spectroscopy, pioneered by the author for the specific
experiments on lasers, are discussed with great expertise in
depth and breadth, and the numerous paper articles published by
the author are now represented in this book.
The book has an elaborate table of contents and index, which are
very useful, over 200 illustrative figures and tables, and
extensive lists of references to all technical topics at the end
of each of the nine chapters, which make it easy to follow from
cover to cover or by jumping in at random areas of special
interest. Moreover, experimental and theoretical concepts are
always illustrated by practical examples and data.
I can highly recommend this extremely relevant, well-structured
and well-formulated book to all practising researchers in
industrial and academic diode laser R&D environments and to
post-graduate engineering students interested in the actual
problems of designing, manufacturing, testing, characterising and
qualifying diode lasers. Due to its completeness and novel
approach to combine design, reliability and diagnostics in the
same book, it can serve as an ideal reference book as well, and
it deserves to be welcomed wordwide by the addressed audience.
Dr. Chung-en Zah, Research Director, Semiconductor Technologies
Research, S&T Division, Corning Incorporate, Corning NY, USA
===========================================
“Semiconductor Laser Engineering, Reliability and Diagnostics: A
Practical Approach to High Power and Single Mode Devices”. By
Peter W. Epperlein
Cordinatore Prof. Lorenzo Pavesi, UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI
TRENTO, Dipartimento di Fisica / Laboratorio di
Nanoscienze
This book represents a well thought description of three
fundamental aspects of laser technology: the functioning
principles, the reliability and the diagnostics. From this point
of view, and, as far as I know, this is a unique example of a
book where all these aspects are merged together resulting in a
well-balanced presentation. This helps the reader to move with
ease between different concepts since they are presented in a
coherent manner and with the same terminology, symbols and
definitions.
The book reads well. Despite the subtitle indicates that it is a
practical approach, the book is also correct from a formal point
of view and presents the necessary equations and derivations to
understand both the physical mechanisms and the practicalities
via a set of useful formulas. In addition, there is the more
important aspect of many real-life examples of how a laser is
actually manufactured and which the relevant parameters that
determine its behaviour are. It impresses the as of
information that are given in the book: this would be more
typical of a thick handbook on semiconductor laser than of an
agile book. Dr. Epperlein was able to identify the most important
concepts and to present them in a clear though concise way.
I am teaching a course on Optoelectronics and I'm going to
advise students to refer to this book, because it has all the
necessary concepts and derivations for a systematic understanding
of semiconductor lasers with many worked-out examples, which will
help the student to grasp the actual problems of designing,
manufacturing, testing and using semiconductor lasers. All the
various concepts are joined to very useful figures, which, if
provided to instructors as files, can be a useful add-on for the
use of the book as text for teaching. Concepts are always
detailed with numbers to give a feeling of their practical use.
In conclusion, I do find the book suitable for my teaching
duties and will refer it to my students.
Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Pavesi, Head of the Department of Physics,
Head of the Nanoscience Laboratory, University of Trento, Italy
31 May 2013
===========================================
“Semiconductor Laser Engineering, Reliability and Diagnostics: A
Practical Approach to High Power and Single Mode Devices”. By
Peter W. Epperlein
Robert W. Herrick, Ph.D., Senior Component Reliability Engineer,
Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California, USA
Dr. Epperlein has done the semiconductor laser community a great
service, by releasing the most complete book on the market on the
practical issues of how to make reliable semiconductor lasers.
While dozens of books have been written over the past couple of
decades on semiconductor laser design, only a handful have been
written on semiconductor laser reliability. Prior to the release
of this book, perhaps 40% of the material could be obtained
elsewhere by combining five books: one on laser design, one on
laser reliability, one on reliability calculations, and a couple
of laser review books. Another 40% could be pieced together by
collecting 50 -100 papers on the subjects of laser design, laser
fabrication, characterization, and reliability. The remaining 20%
have not previously been covered in any comprehensive way. Only
the introductory material in the first half of the first chapter
has good coverage elsewhere. The large majority of the knowledge
in this book is generally held as “trade secret” by those with
the expertise in the field, and most of those in the know are not
free to discuss. The author was fortunate enough to work for the
first half of his career in the IBM research labs, with access to
unparalleled resources, and the ability to publish his work
without trade secret restrictions. The results are still at the
cutting edge of our understanding of semiconductor laser
reliability today, and go well beyond the empirical “black box”
approach many use of “try everything, and see what works.” The
author did a fine job of pulling together material from many
disparate fields.
Dr. Epperlein has particular expertise in high power single mode
semiconductor lasers, and those working on those type of lasers
will be especially interested in this book, as there has never
been a book published on the fabrication and qualification of
such lasers before. But those in almost any field of
semiconductor lasers will learn items of interest about device
design, fabrication, reliability, and characterization. Unlike
most other books, which intend to convey the scientific findings
or past work of the author, this one is written more as a “how
to” manual, which should make it more accessible and useful to
development engineers and researchers in the field. It also has
over 200 figures, which make it easier to follow. As with many
books of this type, it is not necessary to read it from
cover-to-cover; it is best skimmed, with deep diving into any
areas of special interest to the reader. The book is remarkable
also for how comprehensive it is – even experts will discover
something new and useful.
Dr. Epperlein’s book is an essential read for anyone looking to
develop semiconductor lasers for anything other than pure
research use, and I give it my highest recommendation.
Robert W. Herrick, Ph.D., Senior Component Reliability Engineer,
Intel Corp., Santa Clara, California, USA
- Used Book in Good Condition.