Nondestructive Measurement for Front Facet Temperature of Semiconductor Lasers

A convenient, simple method is proposed to measure the front facet temperature, which is the highest temperature in the semiconductor laser diode (LD), of a GaAs-based laser by employing thermoreflectance technique. Using an optical system featured in fiber connection, we measured the facet reflectivity of the 808-nm AlGaInAs/AlGaAs LD, which gives information about the temperature of the output facet. The fiber system operates at the wavelength of 1550 nm which avoids the absorption of the probe beam by the tested LD and consists of a fiber-coupled 1550 nm laser illuminant and photodiode. All optical elements in the system are connected by the fibers. The current signal collected from the photodiode is related to the facet reflectivity and represents facet temperature. We compared the facet temperatures determined by thermoreflectance technique with the cavity temperature obtained by forward-voltage method and found that the former is as much as three times as the latter.