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NIST has been tasked by DARPA to provide wall plug efficiency and spectral measurements of high-power high-efficiency laser diodes and arrays for DARPA's Super High Efficiency Diode Sources (SHEDS)program. To meet the needs for this project, the Optoelectronics Division has developed a new laboratory at NIST to measure electrical power, optical power, wavelength and line width, and junction temperature for lasers supplied by project participants. We describe a novel flowing-water optical power meter (FWOPM) that we have developed to meet the unique optical power measurement challenges presented by these lasers. We have also developed a new method for determining the average laser junction temperature through a simple model of laser waste heat as a function of drive current and cooling temperature. In addition, we present a preliminary uncertainty analysis that yields 1 % uncertainty (with a confidence interval of 95 %) for the efficiency measurements. We intend to continue offering these measurements as part of the NIST Calibration Services for optical radiation measurements, which are available to anyone for a fee.
Proceedings Title
Proc., 24th International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics (ICALEO)
Cromer, C.
and Li, X.
(2005),
High-Power Diode Laser Array Metrology, Proc., 24th International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics (ICALEO), Miami, FL, USA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=32053
(Accessed August 31, 2024)