Radiation Effects In Semiconductor Laser Diode Arrays

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Abstract
The effects of radiation events are important for many of the present and future applications that involve opto-electronic components. Laser diodes show a strong resistance to degradation by gamma rays, prompt x-rays and (to a lesser extent), neutrons. This is due to the short carrier lifetime that is associated with stimulated emission and the high current injection conditions that are present in these devices. Radiation-resistant properties should carry over to many of the more recently developed devices such as multi-stripe array and broad area laser diodes. There are however, additional considerations for radiation tolerance that are introduced by these devices. Arrays and other high power laser diodes have larger active region volumes than lower power single stripe devices. In addition, evanescent field coupling between stripes, the material quality available from newer MOCVD expitaxial growth techniques, and stripe definition methods may all influence the radiation tolerance of the high power laser diode devices. Radiation tests have been conducted on various GaAs-GaAlAs laser diode array and broad area devices. Tests involving total gamma dose have indicated that high power laser diodes and arrays have small degradations in light power output with current input after 4 MRad(Si) of radiation from a Co60 source. Additional test results involving flash X-rays indicate that high power diode lasers and arrays are tolerant to 10rads(Si)/sec, when observed on microsecond or milli-second time scales. High power diode laser devices were also irradiated with neutrons to a fluence of 1014 neutrons per cm2 with some degradation of thresh-old current level.© (1989) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

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