Electronic – Driving a butterfly package DFB laser

Laser diodes themselves can pulse as fast as you like - down to nanosecs - actual speed depends on the driver. It is not generally practical to increase power at lower duty cycles as the limiting factor tends to be optical damage rather then purely thermal. Bear in mind that unless you need the coherence or tight beam of a laser, normal power LEDs will typically give you more output power then lasers, and are more amenable to increasing power for short durations.

1. What Olin says technically (as almost always :-)). Also, as he says - you need to be clearer in describing your need if you want a good answer.

2. Lots of circuits here plus various pictures (this is just a Google image search - but useful). Be aware that the quality of the offerings will range from very good through rubbish. Caveat Emptor.

   Here are a few samples from above. No guarantees !!!

   • Radio Shack LASER pointer driver

   • Roithner EU38 LASER Diode driver

   • Basic driver that seems to do what you want

   • EDN article

3. This is a superb LASER resource - hav a good look at what it offers. Sam's LASER FAQ is a long time well known site with much good information. Here is his Diode LASER power supplies page.

   From the above, see at the end of this post "Care and feeding of LASER diodes".

4. Commercial LASER Diode Driver PCBs. These LOOK like they could be modestly priced if they chose to make them so - but they are probably horriobly over priced.

5. This is for information only - worth a look. It shows what goies into a commercial LASER diode driver block diagram - scary stuff.

From Sam's LASER Diode page - reformated:

Care and feeding of LASER diodes.

The following must be achieved to properly drive a laser diode and not ruin it in short order:

• Absolute current limiting. This includes immunity to power line transients as well as those that may occur during power-on and power-off cycling. The parameters of many electronic components like ICs are rarely specified during periods of changing input power. Special laser diode drive chips are available which meet these requirements but a common op-amp may not be suitable without extreme care in circuit design - if at all.

• Current regulation. Efficiency and optical power output of a laser diode goes up with decreasing temperature. This means that without optical feedback, a laser diode switched on and adjusted at room temperature will have reduced output once it warms up. Conversely, if the current is set up after the laser diode has warmed up, it will likely blow out the next time it is switched on at room temperature if there is no optical feedback based regulation.

• Note that the damage from improper drive is not only due to thermal effects (though overheating is also possible) but due to exceeding the maximum optical power density (E/M field gradients?) at one of the end facets (mirrors) - and thus the nearly iSnstantaneous nature of the risk.

• The optical output of a laser diode also declines as it heats up. This is reversible as long as no actual thermal damage has taken place. However, facet damage due to exceeding the optical output specifications is permanent. The result may be an expensive LED or (possibly greatly) reduced laser emission.