445 diode abuse, durability testing, and failure rates

[mpoulton]

I thought it was time to sacrifice a few of these diodes to see just how sensitive they are to all the usual causes of diode damage. Here are my observations:

They do not mind brief current pulses. 3-4A for 1ms does no damage at all, even after hundreds of pulses at 10Hz.

Directly connecting one to a 9V battery will burn the bond wires almost instantly. I'm not inclined to repeat the experiment with a scope to see how long it actually took and what the current was. Suffice to say, mistaken connection to a voltage-mode power supply will kill this laser diode just like any other.

Reverse bias at 7.4V did no damage. Current was less than 1mA at that voltage. Same at 8.6V.

These lasers are extremely heat sensitive: Operation at 350mA with no heatsink causes a very noticeable permanent drop in power after about 5 seconds. Holding a 250C soldering iron on the leads for 10 seconds (no heatsink on the laser) dropped power from 955mW before to 410mW after at 1A.

Although they seem to be fairly durable, I have noticed a moderate failure rate from the factory. In the A130 projectors, I find about 1 dead or seriously under-performing laser for every 2-3 arrays, or 1.5-2%.

Anyone else have any experiences roughhousing with these yet?

[Lasermad]

I cant add anything to this , but thanks for sharing this info , appreciated

[krazer]

I posted it in the diode info thread, but since that has since fallen to the trolls I will post it again here, my page on these diodes. It has my stress testing, where I ran a diode at 1.5A for a few days and did not observe any detectable power loss. I then ran the diode at 2A and the power dropped irreversibly at a slow/constant rate.

[rfourt]

NIce info..

So basicly you could run these at 1.5A without braking them.. Ithought the max was 1.0A