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nLight Photonics wins $5 million DARPA contract

Funding will accelerate the development of high-power diode lasers.

nLight Photonics has been awarded a $5 million research and development contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under its Super High Efficiency Diode Source (SHEDS) program. The contract will enable nLight to take a dramatic step forward in high power laser diode efficiency.

Last month, DARPA made an award of $3.9 million to Alfalight under the same program (see related story).

The aim of SHEDS is to continue the improvement of laser diodes with a goal of converting over 80% of their input electrical power into output optical power. This level of efficiency will enable lasers with up to 100 kW of output power to be deployed on mobile military platforms.

“This program will enable nLight to take a quantum leap forward in high power diode laser performance” said Jason Farmer, vice president of advanced technology at nLight."

“Both output power and reliability of high power diode lasers are critically dependent on operating temperature. With current packaging technologies every watt of heat generated corresponds to a particular rise in operating temperature.”

"The key issue for reliable high power laser diodes is therefore optimizing the ratio of optical power generated to heat deposited in the package. Today, roughly this ratio is roughly 1 to 1. The technology to be developed on this program will increase this ratio to 4 to 1.”

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