Thermal Management of High-Power Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser Arrays

This article presents a numerical simulation and experimental study on thermal management of high-power large-area vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays. We fabricated 1 $\times$ 1 mm and 5 $\times$ 5 mm VCSEL arrays and constructed their respective 3-D electro-thermal coupling models. Detailed information about the thermal power within the VCSEL arrays was obtained through theoretical analysis. Combined with the experimental data, the thermal distribution of the arrays was calculated. Furthermore, a random function with Gaussian distribution was used to simulate random voids in the packaging, and the thermal characteristics of devices with void ratios of 0%, 5%, and 10% were analyzed. Through theoretical simulations and experimental measurements, a detailed quantitative analysis of the thermal effects of GaAs substrates on high-power VCSEL arrays was performed. This work demonstrates that effective thermal management of the array can be achieved by removing the substrate and controlling the void ratio to below 5%.