Development trend of high-power laser pointer industry
At present, using different ion-doped fibers as gain media can achieve full-wave coverage from 1 to 5 μm; using Raman and non-linear frequency conversion technologies, high-power, high-brightness ultraviolet, visible and infrared light can be achieved green laser pointer output. In fact, as early as 1961, American scientists proposed that the use of rare-earth-doped fibers in the laser cavity could obtain a stable single-mode laser output, but it was limited by the production of optical fibers and pumping light sources and failed to develop rapidly.
The 1970s to 1980s were two decades of rapid development of semiconductor lasers and fiber drawing processes. Thanks to modern processes of vapor deposition and semiconductor pumping sources that can operate at room temperature, research on single-mode fiber lasers has gradually begun . However, at this time, the signal light and pumping light of the optical fiber are transmitted in the core, and it is difficult to efficiently couple a low-brightness semiconductor laser into a core with a diameter of several micrometers. Therefore, a fiber laser can only produce milliseconds for a long time. Watt-level laser output.
In 1988, the emergence of double-clad fibers caused a significant increase in the output power of fiber lasers. A typical double-clad optical fiber structure includes a core, an inner cladding, and an outer cladding. The outer cladding has a lower refractive index than the inner cladding, so pumped light can be transmitted in the inner cladding. The diameter and numerical aperture of the inner cladding can be much larger than the fiber core, which facilitates efficient coupling of pumped light. After the pumping light has been totally reflected in the inner cladding layer for many times, it enters the core doped with rare earth ions and is absorbed to realize the generation or amplification of laser engraver. With the advent of cladding pumping technology, the output power of fiber lasers has been increased from milliwatts to watts.
In the 1990s, with the development of 9xx nm high-power semiconductor lasers and double-clad fiber manufacturing processes, the output power of fiber lasers has increased rapidly. At the end of the 1990s, the development of large-mode-field optical fibers promoted further enhancement of laser power. Using a large mode field area fiber while adopting a certain mode control to make the laser operate in single mode in a large-mode multimode fiber can greatly increase the threshold of nonlinear effects. This technology successfully achieved 100 W single-mode continuous laser output in 1999.
The market prospect of high-power fiber Laser pointer may be far beyond your imagination. High-power fiber laser technology is one of the hot research directions in the field of optoelectronic technology in recent years, especially in the field of laser technology. It has been widely used in industrial manufacturing, medical treatment, energy exploration, military defense and other fields.
From the development trend of the entire high-power laser industry, fiber lasers combine the waveguide characteristics of optical fibers and the pumping characteristics of semiconductors. They have outstanding advantages such as good beam quality, high efficiency, good heat dissipation, compact structure, and flexible operation. The development direction of high power, high brightness laser.
