Over 100-mW blue-violet laser diodes for Blu-ray Disc system

Abstract

400-nm-band GaN-based blue-violet laser diodes (LDs) operating with a high output power of over 100 mW have been successfully fabricated. A new ridge structure, in which the outside of the ridge was covered with a stacked layer of Si on SiO₂ and the ridge width was as narrow as 1.4 μm, was applied to realize the stable lateral-mode operation. A layer structure around the active layer was carefully designed so as to ensure a high COD level. The lasers have been operated stably for more than 500 h under 130-mW pulsed operation at 60°C. From ambient temperature dependence of the device lifetime, the empirical activation energy was estimated as 0.32 eV. These results indicate that this LD is suitable for next-generation Blu-ray Disc system.