We report on power scaling of Yb-doped femtosecond lasers emitting at 1030 nm with multi-mJ pulse energies from the level of several 100-W of average output power to a level exceeding 1 kW. Technological building blocks that are crucial for scaling power and pulse energy will be presented. Additionally, we highlight functionalities that have been developed and integrated into the high-power femtosecond laser systems to optimally exploit their potential in different relevant use cases for industrial applications. Moreover, the perspectives for further power and pulse energy scaling will be discussed.
We report on a 300-W industrial femtosecond laser with ultrashort compressed pulses. Pulse compression is performed within a gas-filled multi-pass cell and results in about 50fs pulses at an energy of 600µJ. Long terms tests of more than 10 days revealed excellent long term and short-term stability of the system. Relevant laser and system parameters are continuously monitored and logged thus enabling to correlate these parameters with results obtained when using this laser for scientific experiments or machining applications. The perspectives to even shorter pulses and higher power and pulse energies will be discussed.
New industrial applications of femtosecond lasers are continuously emerging in various industrial sectors: health, production, energy, transport. Fiber delivery of femtosecond pulses and power is a key enabling technology for opening industrial application fields much wider: conventional micromachining stations typically based on ultrastable and ultraheavy granite tables are avoided and the femtosecond laser is coupled into a flexible light guide instead. Ultraprecise machining processes can such be displaced far from the femtosecond laser source and coupled to moving axes or robot systems. Here, we report on a femtosecond fiber delivery system for industrial applications. In a first demonstration, the delivery system is coupled to a Satsuma industrial femtosecond laser with average output power of more than 20 W and pulse energy up to 60 μJ. Polarization control allows addressing any kind of micromachining applications, also those sensitive to the polarization state incident on the workpiece. Coupling of the fiber delivery system to a robot system and the nanotexturing by LIPSS will be here reported. Comparisons of the obtained results with conventional micromachining applications using free beam propagation are drawn and future perspectives to higher laser powers and energies as well as to wavelength converted femtosecond pulses discussed.
Femtosecond technologies will enable new fields of use and new methods of production thanks to the "agility" of high-power fs lasers associated with beam engineering. The relative slowness of the removal processes in femtosecond mode is no longer a limitation and the unique quality of ultra-short processes is therefore accessible to an increasingly important panel of industrial implementation. We report on the versatile use of femtosecond pulses at more than 300W average power at a wavelength of 1030 nm, 200W at 515nm, and 100W at 343 nm, free triggering of the laser output pulses, and burst generation.
We report on an agile nonlinear device able to generate 300W, mJ-level, transform-limited pulses from few picoseconds down to few tens of femtoseconds. The system is based on an industrial-grade 330W laser, delivering 400fs pulses followed by an efficient, >90% throughput, gas-filled multipass cell where self-phase modulation occurs. Adjustment of the chamber gas pressure and incoming pulse chirped either favors spectral compression or nonlinear compression, leading to the generation 300W, 1mJ, high beam quality and nearly transform-limited pulses of 2ps down to 30fs within a single system. This source is a versatile tool for both industrial and scientific applications.
We report on the first industrial UV femtosecond laser with more than 100W average output power. The laser is ideally suited for high throughput precision applications, in particular for glass and polymer cutting in display industry. Thanks to its flexibility in pulse repetition rate, pulse energy, and free triggering at constant pulse energy, the femtosecond UV laser can be used in parallel processing with multiple beams as well as in high speed scanning applications, e.g. with polygonal scanners. The femtosecond pulse duration after frequency conversion to UV can be substantially reduced compared to the 400-fs pulse duration high power laser at the fundamental wavelength of 1030nm.
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