Expensive semiconductor laser diodes have no tolerance for fast voltage or current transients. To minimize the risk of damage, a standard JFET-clamp circuit shorts the laser when there is no supply ...

This circuit was designed to meet a medical application’s requirement to drive a laser diode with reasonable precision and a minimum of components and footprint (the device is now in clinical trials).

If there’s one lesson to be learned from [Aled Cuda]’s pulsed laser driver, it’s that you can treat the current limits on electronic components as a suggestion if the current duration is measured in ...

Laser diodes can destroy themselves in a few nanoseconds, so testing the response and stability of a feedback-stabilized laser-diode driver can be expensive. The simulator circuit in Figure 1 shows a ...