News Article
Here come the BRIDLE diode lasers
A new consortium has been set up to develop III-V diode-laser mini-bars for industrial applications
A consortium of companies and research institutes from five European countries have joined forces in an EC funded research project.
Their aim is to achieve dramatic improvements in the brilliance of high-power direct diode laser systems.
BRIDLE makes use of a modular, scalable and upward compatible approach, employing advanced technologies and beam combination architectures, leading to a diode laser source that delivers more than 2kW output power from a Ø100μm, NA less than 0.15 optical fibre with a power conversion efficiency of over 40 percent.
BRIDLE diode-laser mini-bar design concept based on tapered emitters
Novel diode-laser mini-bars will be developed by the consortium targeting a three times higher brilliance compared to commercially available broad area emitters. They also aim to accomplish dense and coarse spectral multiplexing schemes pursued for power scaling.
What's more, coherent beam combining techniques that phase-couple bars to produce nearly diffraction limited output will be investigated.
During the project, a sequence of increasingly brilliant demonstrators will be developed, each targeting a specific industrial application. Manufacturability and cost down-scaling issues are also addressed by integrating micro-optical beam shaping and beam combination into the production process.
The project, was initially coordinated by Dilas Diodenlaser GmbH in Germany. The consortium includes researchers from University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT and the Ferdinand Braun Institute FBH, both Germany, the Laboratoire Charles Fabry of the Institut d’Optique at CNRS, France and the industrial partners Modulight of Finland and Bystronic, Switzerland.
Their aim is to achieve dramatic improvements in the brilliance of high-power direct diode laser systems.
BRIDLE makes use of a modular, scalable and upward compatible approach, employing advanced technologies and beam combination architectures, leading to a diode laser source that delivers more than 2kW output power from a Ø100μm, NA less than 0.15 optical fibre with a power conversion efficiency of over 40 percent.
BRIDLE diode-laser mini-bar design concept based on tapered emitters
Novel diode-laser mini-bars will be developed by the consortium targeting a three times higher brilliance compared to commercially available broad area emitters. They also aim to accomplish dense and coarse spectral multiplexing schemes pursued for power scaling.
What's more, coherent beam combining techniques that phase-couple bars to produce nearly diffraction limited output will be investigated.
During the project, a sequence of increasingly brilliant demonstrators will be developed, each targeting a specific industrial application. Manufacturability and cost down-scaling issues are also addressed by integrating micro-optical beam shaping and beam combination into the production process.
The project, was initially coordinated by Dilas Diodenlaser GmbH in Germany. The consortium includes researchers from University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT and the Ferdinand Braun Institute FBH, both Germany, the Laboratoire Charles Fabry of the Institut d’Optique at CNRS, France and the industrial partners Modulight of Finland and Bystronic, Switzerland.
