8 W CW front-facet power from 100 /spl mu/m-aperture, Al-free, 0.98 /spl mu/m diode lasers with large optical cavity

By increasing the optical-cavity thickness of SCH-SL-DQW InGaAs/InGaP/GaAs (/spl lambda/=0.98 /spl mu/m) lasers from 0.2 /spl mu/m to 1.0 /spl mu/m the internal loss decreases fivefold to /spl sim/1.5 cm/sup -1/, and the transverse spot size doubles to 0.6 /spl mu/m (FWHM). As a result, 100 /spl mu/m-aperture devices emit up to 8.1 W CW from their front facets.