Bookham targets industrial laser market
Bookham Technology is to focus on the high-power industrial laser market with a range of GaAs-based products manufactured at its Zurich, Switzerland, facility.
The company has adapted its 980 nm telecom lasers to emit at other wavelengths, including 808 nm, which is more suitable for optically-pumping high-power lasers based on certain rare-earth-doped crystals.
Bookham says that a 60 W laser bar emitting at 808 nm has now been qualified after 5000 hrs of testing, and it expects to release further products emitting 80 W and 120 W by the end of this year.
"We have just achieved a world-record 320 W 1 cm bar [emitting] at 920 nm on a standard microchannel cooler," said Chuck Milligan, Bookham s VP of industrial and defense solutions.
High-power lasers pumped by semiconductor devices have been dogged by problems relating to the reliability of the diodes in the past, and have not displaced the incumbent flashlamp-driven sources as quickly as had been expected.
However, Bookham says that the reliability of its industrial laser diodes will strongly improve system performance.
The company explains that this reliability arises partly from the gold-tin soldering method it uses to mount laser diodes. This so-called "hard" soldering allows diodes to be driven at higher powers and temperatures than other solders used in industrial applications, such as indium, says Bookham.
After data storage and telecoms, industrial lasers represent the third-biggest application sector in the market for laser diodes. The market for them is expected to grow 14% to reach $135 million in 2004, according to a report by Strategies Unlimited published earlier this year.
