••An analytical 3-D thermal model is employed to design the package of high-power single-emitter laser diodes.••••An analytical 3-D thermal model is employed to design the package of high-power single-emitter laser diodes.••Thermal design curves for laser diode packages are presented in detail.••An effective heat spreading angle is proposed to characterize thermal design for the heat sink.••A differential heat spreading angle is prop. An analytical three-dimensional thermal model is employed to perform the thermal design for the package of high-power single-emitter laser diodes. Thermal design curves for the heat sink and submount are presented in detail, for laser diodes subjected to several convective heat transfer conditions on the bottom of the heat sink. An effective heat spreading angle is proposed to characterize thermal design for the heat sink. A differential heat spreading angle is proposed to clearly manifest heat flow in the packages. Full width and length at 90% energy are introduced to reveal the requirement of submount width and length, respectively. The impact of coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE)-matched sandwiched submount on total heat dissipation is studied. Special discussion is presented f. High-power laser diodesThermal designThermal resistanceHeat sinkSubmountHeat spreading angleHigh-power single-emitter laser diodes are widely used in fiber coupling and fiber laser pumping applications,,,,,,. Temperature rise and distribution in the active region affect the laser performance in numerous ways, such as efficiency, output power, spectral distribution, polarization, reliability, and lifetime,,,,. Due to power saturation limited by thermal rollover, currently, the maximum continuous wave (CW) output power delivered from a 9xx-nm high-power single-emitter laser diode working at 25 °C is limited to 37 W,.Thermal resistance of the laser package and heat power generated in the laser chip jointly determine the temperature rise in the active region. Laser chips are packaged on the heat sink generally with epi-down con. The analytical 3-D steady-state thermal model presented in our previous works was introduced in this paper,. The solution is in the following form:(1)Tlx,y,z=A00,lz+B00,l+∑m=1∞Am. A and B are the coefficients which could be solved based on given thermal boundary conditions, l is the layer number, WHS and LHS are heat sink width and length, respectively.In the analytical model, the submount was assumed to have the same width and length as the heat sink. All the heat was assumed to locate at the junction plane in a uniform planar distribution. A convective heat transfer condition was set at the bottom of the heat sink. Top and side walls of the package were assumed to be adia.