Investigation on transient catastrophic optical damage in high power AlGaAs/GaAs laser diodes

The phenomenon of transient catastrophic optical damage (COD) was studied experimentally by means of thermal infrared imaging, photon emission microscope (EMMI), and electron diffraction technology (SAED) under high-resolution transmission electron microscope. We have recorded the dynamics of COD process using thermal infrared camera. The temperature of transient COD has a sudden increase of 32.07 °C when the COD event occurs which maintains less than 8.69 ms accompanying with the sudden decrease of output power. The reverse leakage current was investigated by EMMI. The leakage current of the COD sample increase and the photo in the active region was observed. Moreover, the result obtained from SAED technology identified that the silicon was changed into polycrystalline near the active area, contrasting to the silicon outside active area still remained initial single phase after COD.