Existing gas and solid state green laser technology is not adequate to Navys needs for comm due to the large size, weight, cost, inefficiency, complexity. Furthermore, to modulate these lasers at high frequency, expensive and bulky acousto-optical modulators are required. Additionally, the emission wavelength is restricted to the atomic transitions of the gain crystal or gas, typically 532nm or 514nm in the green region. Green laser diodes are an ideal solution, but these are not yet available commercially. Soraa , Inc. is world leader in the development of InGaN green and blue laser diodes and proposes to develop a Compact, Efficient, High Power Semiconductor Laser for Undersea Communication. Soraa has demonstrated world record results in CW green and blue emitting laser diodes: >190mW CW in the 510-520nm range for single mode devices and >4W at 450nm from a laser array. Soraas cofounders, Dr. Shuji Nakamura, Dr. Steve Denbaars, and Dr. Jim Speck, performed the first demonstration of a high brightness GaN blue laser diode (LD) and light emitting diode (LED) in the 1990s. Soraa is a US company with a world renowned team, strong financial backing, patents, and supply chain to become a strong supplier to the US DoD.
Benefit: Throughout the last ~50 years, broad adoption of lasers is enabled when the laser output can be created with a direct diode laser. Examples of $B markets include communications lasers, data storage lasers, and rangefinding lasers. All of these applications were initially developed with complex gas or multi-stage lasers crystal lasers, but broad commercialization and deployment of these applications was enabled with chip based diode lasers because of diode lasers superior efficiency, compactness, ruggedness, and cost structure. In this context, high power, green laser diodes are applicable for other critically important Navy applications including illumination, heads up displays, pumping of other ulsed lasers, and non-lethal threat detection. Additionally, the private sector industry will benefit from this program as it provides a jump start toward higher power semiconductor lasers in the green wavelengths. These lasers are of great commercial interest as they are a critical component to projection display applications. A green semiconductor laser source would enable wide adoption of projection displays in conventional formats down to emerging
Keywords: Green laser diode, InGaN laser diode, Undersea communications, Semiconductor Laser, gallium nitride, GaN laser diode
