USHER IN A NEW AGE OF APPLICATIONS

Benefit in your Application Nowadays, lasers are established as highly precise, contact- and abrasion-free tools. In particular, ultrafast lasers, possessing femto- and picosecond pulse durations, open up novel and innovatiove applications in fields such as industrial production, medical treatment and fundamental science. A prominent example is the "cold" ablation, i.e. the micromachining of temperature-sensitive materials with highest precision and without collateral damage - see examples for nanosecond versus femtosecond drilled holes in stainless steel below.

In collaboration with the Institute of Applied Physics in Jena our fiber laser technology has been used for a number of applications. The references below provide an overview about laser material processing using ultrafast fiber lasers at high repetition rates.

Whenever low probability processes are triggered or material is processed by ultrashort laser pulses, the pulse repetition frequency becomes a crucial value for either a detectable or a cost-effective application. Generating pulses with high repetition frequency is the well-known strenght of fiber-based amplification.

Application Note 1, Application Note 2

Comparison of holes drilled in a 100 µm-thick stainless steel foil using 3.3 ns (left) and 200 fs (right) pulses. In both cases fluences just above the ablation threshold and 10,000 pulses have been used.

 long pulses (ns)                                                                                            ultrashort pulses (fs-ps)