chanelink logo
CHANELINK
Español

Scientists use glass to create femtosecond lasers

861
2023-09-28 17:12:33
Ver traducción

Image source: Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland

 

Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, September 27th (Reporter Zhang Jiaxin) Commercial femtosecond lasers are manufactured by placing optical components and their mounting bases on a substrate, which requires strict alignment of optical components. So, is it possible to manufacture femtosecond lasers entirely from glass? According to the latest issue of Optics magazine, scientists at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland have successfully achieved this, with lasers no larger than credit cards and easier to align.

Researchers stated that due to the lower thermal expansion of glass compared to traditional substrates, it is a stable material. Therefore, they chose glass as the substrate and used commercial femtosecond lasers to etch special grooves on the glass to accurately place the basic components of the laser. Even in precision manufacturing at the micron level, the grooves and components themselves are not precise enough to achieve laser quality alignment. In other words, the reflector is not fully aligned, so at this stage, their glass device cannot be used as a laser.

So, researchers further designed etching to position a mirror in a groove with micro mechanical bending, which can locally twist the mirror when irradiated by femtosecond laser. By aligning the mirror in this way, they ultimately created a stable, small-scale femtosecond laser.

Despite its small size, the peak power of the laser is about 1 kilowatt, and the time to emit pulses is less than 200 femtoseconds, which is so short that light cannot pass through human hair.

This method of permanently aligning free space optical components through laser material interaction can be extended to various optical circuits, with extreme alignment resolutions as low as sub nanometer level.

 

Reprinted from：LDWORLD

Recomendaciones relacionadas

  • First 6-inch thin film lithium niobate photonic chip wafer pilot production line

    Recently, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Wuxi Photon Chip Research Institute (CHIPX) located in Binhu District, Wuxi City, has achieved a breakthrough - the first 6-inch thin film lithium niobate photon chip wafer has been produced on China's first photon chip pilot line, and high-performance thin film lithium niobate modulator chips with ultra-low loss and ultra-high bandwidth have been mass-produ...

    06-11
    Ver traducción

  • Switzerland's top 100 sales drop to 330.9 million Swiss francs in the first half of the year

    Recently, Swiss company Bystronic disclosed its financial performance for the first half of 2024.The financial report shows that the market situation for the Swiss Super 100 in the first half of 2024 remains very tense. Customers in various end markets are unable to fully utilize their production capacity, and operations in all regions are relatively cautious.Despite Swiss supercar actively reduci...

    2024-07-24
    Ver traducción

  • Outlook - Future of miniaturized lasers

    The disruptive miniaturization design of fiber lasers is feeding back into the handheld laser welding market. The handheld laser welding that enters the trunk is bathed in the luster of black technology, making traditional argon arc welding and electric welding tremble.In the early years, argon arc welding was the most commonly used thin plate welding method among our ancestors, but its drawbacks ...

    2023-12-19
    Ver traducción

  • Rapid and convenient preparation of small-sized metal nanoparticles using microchip lasers

    Liquid pulse laser ablation is a reliable and versatile technique for producing metal nanoparticles in solution. Its advantages include no reducing agent, simple operation, high purity, no need for purification steps, and environmental processing conditions, making it the preferred method for traditional metal NP preparation.The widespread adoption of PLAL in scientific and industrial research has...

    2024-01-30
    Ver traducción

  • A professor from Sun Yat sen University proposes a new clean energy technology for laser manufacturing

    Energy conversion technology is an important research direction in modern science and engineering. Scientists are exploring new catalytic chemical methods to achieve the conversion of energy chemicals, such as photocatalysis and electrocatalysis. However, these highly anticipated catalytic chemistry technologies still have some problems in practical applications, and there is still a certain dista...

    2024-06-13
    Ver traducción