Beam quality of blue InGaN laser for projection

Abstract The blue light sources of choice for laser projection will be long wavelength nitride lasers because of their high wall plug efficiency and their small form factor compared to blue light sources using second harmonic generation. High quality of the far field is required for laser projection. However, optical confinement of GaN/AlGaN structures becomes increasingly difficult when wavelength shifts from 405 nm to the true blue spectrum. We will show excellent far fields by suppression of higher order laser modes and by improved waveguiding, respectively. We present simulations of laser modes as a function of ridge width. The slow axis far field is improved by absorber layers that guarantee in‐plane values of M2 < 1.5. Sufficient vertical confinement of the laser light by thick cladding layers is necessary to suppress laser modes guided within the substrate. We present 440 nm lasers for projection with threshold currents of 20 mA and slope efficiencies more than 0.8 W/A. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)