News: Optoelectronics
17 January 2023
Coherent launches first commercially available 50W pump laser diodes for fiber lasers
Materials, networking and laser technology firm Coherent Corp has launched its next-generation pump laser diodes, which achieve output power of 50W from a single chip (40% more than that of the existing product), enabling high-power industrial fiber laser designs with fewer pump laser diodes.
The deployment of fiber lasers for materials processing applications such as cutting, welding, marking and additive manufacturing is accelerating, driving the demand for key components that lower the cost per watt of output power.
“This is the first commercially available pump laser diode in the industry to achieve 50W of output power,” believes Dr Karlheinz Gulden, senior VP, Laser Components and Subsystems business unit. “We continue to break new industry records in semiconductor laser diode output power, based on our gallium arsenide technology platform that has decades of field-proven reliability.”
The new 50W laser diodes are available at 915nm and 976nm. The output facet width of the laser chips is available from 150µm to 350µm, enabling optimal coupling efficiency and output powers for a wide range of fiber laser designs. The chips include Coherent’s proprietary E2 front mirror passivation that prevents catastrophic damage to the laser, even at extremely high output powers.
Coherent offers pump laser diodes as bare dies, chips on ceramic submounts, and in fiber-coupled multi-emitter modules. The firm’s broad portfolio of components for fiber lasers includes seed lasers, acousto-optic modulators, fiber Bragg gratings, kilowatt pump and signal combiners, as well as IBS-coated laser optics and micro-optics for high-power isolators.
Coherent is showcasing its solutions for life sciences, precision manufacturing, and sensing at BiOS and Photonics West in San Francisco (28 January to 2 February).
