Integrated Thermal Management and Wafer-Scale Packaging for High-Power VCSELs

Aerius Photonics is proposing to develop high-power Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) and arrays on 4” substrates with an integrated thermal management approach to improve the thermal performance on an entirely wafer-level manufacturing compatible process. This is critical as waste heat and wafer-scale manufacturing approaches are driving factors for performance and costs in a laser diode, especially diode pumped solid-state laser systems relevant to the US BMDS. The performance of the high-power diode laser is limited by the ability of the packaging to extract heat away from the laser’s active region, where the majority of the heat is generated. If the heat is not removed, the gain, and subsequently the output power and efficiency of the laser and entire system are decreased. In this proposal, Aerius will develop a wafer-scale compatible process on 4” substrates with improved thermal performance for high power VCSEL arrays. This approach will further improve the thermal performance and manufacturability of VCSEL technology and offer a 50% reduction in the laser diode heating by improving the waste heat transport and spreading from the semiconductor chip to the thermal management system.