December 5, 2016
Processing materials by laser pulses in the nanosecond range has become standard in industry. Ever smaller and more precise structures can be made by latest laser technology, which uses pulses of durations in the pico-second and femto-second ranges. With these technologies, the energy impacting on the target sport is extremely compressed. The photonic energy of the pulse is so short that the surrounding material is not heated. An advantage of this principle is that extremely precise and delicate structures can be made.
The optical systems employed must satisfy extremely high performance requirements. Adaptation of the optical system to the physical principles of ultra-short laser pulses is an absolute ‘must’.
Optics Balzers has developed and successfully tested a special dielectric layer system. The PARMS coating technology made it possible to manufacture 45°-HR mirrors for 1030nm for which a destruction threshold of 0.44J/cm² at 210fs was established. Typically, these are used in ultra-short pulsed systems of Yb:YAG solid-state lasers. These mirrors, deposited on 1“ substrates, are available for demonstration.
Measured laser damage threshold of a 45° mirror for 1030nm with 210fs pulses
In the next step, the process will be optimised to improve the results obtained so far. Besides, designs for other typical ultra-short pulse wavelengths will be tested, among them mirrors for titanium-sapphire lasers at 800nm and erbium lasers at 1550nm.
The new data sheets «Nd : YAG Laser Line Mirrors» and «Ti : Sapphire Laser Line Mirrors» are available at www.opticsbalzers.com.
