Abstract
In recent years, the recording speed of optical disc drives is increasing. Along with this, the power consumption of laser diodes in optical pickups is increasing. Although, reliability of laser diodes depends on temperature, we need to design the laser diode to operate at appropriate temperature. Therefore, precise prediction of laser diode temperature by thermal analysis has become important. We measured the distribution of the heat transfer coefficient around an optical pickup for various rotating speeds of an optical disc, and applied this to thermal analysis. We confirmed that the temperature of a laser diode can be predicted with high accuracy using this method.
