Thermal Stress Relief through Introduction of a Microtrench Structure for a High-power-laser-diode Bar

Relief of thermal stress has received great attention, to improve the beam quality and stability of high-power laser diodes. In this paper. we investigate a microtrench structure engraved around a laser-diode chip-on-submount (CoS) to relieve the thermal stress on a laser-diode bar (LD-bar), using the SolidWorks (R) software. First, we systematically analyze the thermal stress on the LD-bar CoS with a metal heat-sink holder, and then derive an optimal design for thermal stress relief according to the change in microtrench depth. The thermal stress of the front part of the LD-bar CoS, which is the main cause of the "smile effect", is reduced to about 1/5 of that without the microtrench structure, while maintaining the thermal resistance.