II-VI Launches Laser Bars for Directed Energy Weapons
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200 watt actively-cooled laser bars are capable of building stacks with more than 7 kilowatts of output power
II"VI, a provider of high-power semiconductor laser components, has announced the commercial availability of its industry actively cooled laser bars, emitting 200W of continuous wave power with greater than 60 percent efficiency. These laser bars enable multi-kilowatt vertical stacks to optically pump neodymium-doped solid-state lasers, including in below-freezing environments.
"With these bars we are capable of building stacks with more than 7 kilowatts of output power," said Karlheinz Gulden, general manager, II-VI Laser Enterprise. "It's a significant achievement that adds to our 20 year legacy of GaAs laser technology platform development."
Next generation directed energy weapon systems require increased mobility and operation at extreme ambient temperatures. II-VI's new laser bars are said to offer an unprecedented combination of power, efficiency and polarisation purity.They enable diode-pumped solid state laser designs employed in new directed energy weapon systems to achieve optimum size, weight and energy efficiency.
The use of an ethylene-glycol coolant makes the II-VI laser bars commercially unique in their ability to operate in extremely low temperature conditions such as in airborne vehicles and withstand storage temperatures as low as -40degC.
II-VI's new laser diode-bars, with demonstrated continuous wave output of up to 275 W, are rated for continuous wave output of 200 W in operation. The laser bars can be stacked to optically pump multi-kilowatt solid-state lasers. They also feature a proprietary hard solder technology designed to withstand high power pulsed operation with excellent reliability.
With short operating wavelengths in the 8xx nm regime, the laser-bar stacks are also effective in direct diode laser systems to process metals such as copper, bronze, brass, stainless steel and aluminum that are otherwise highly reflective to the longer wavelengths of typical industrial lasers.
II-VI will show its optical systems capabilities at the Directed Energy Systems Symposium in Monterey, CA, September 25-29, 2017.
