Tag: fiber lasers

Organic fiber laser systems enlarge their applications

According to the last research, now it has become possible to design accessible laser systems that are able to emit laser beams of a wide range of colors resulting in new fields of applications from communications and sensing systems to displays. Thus, researchers from Japan have developed an optically pumped organic thin-film laser module that allows continuously producing laser beam light for 30 ms that is about 100 times longer than previously used laser devices.

Compared to conventional inorganic laser systems (used in CD drives and laser pointers), the principle of organic thin-film laser module’s operation is based on a thin layer of organic molecules as the laser medium that emits laser beams by producing and intensifying light during the excitement of an energy source. Herewith, an intense ultraviolet laser beam light from an inorganic laser system is regarded as the energy source.

Additionally, the organic laser system is highly potential because it offers such an advantage as the opportunity to more easily reach colors that are virtually impossible with inorganic laser devices. It should be noted that “by designing and synthesizing molecules with new structures, laser beam emission of any color of the rainbow is possible.” Although organic thin-film laser systems have been studied for a long time, such features as degradation and loss processes have significantly restricted the duration of laser beam emission.

Nonetheless, the researchers succeeded to overcome the mentioned challenges and enlarge the duration of the laser system process by unifying three strategies:

The use of an organic fiber laser medium with triplet excitons that absorb various colors of laser beam light than that produced by the laser system to decrease main losses originating from the absorption of emission by packets of energy.
The problem of thermal degradation is solved by manufacturing the laser devices on a crystalline silicon wafer and gluing a piece of sapphire glass on top of the organic laser system medium with a special polymer. The thing is that the silicon and sapphire material, applied in the organic thin-film laser module, are considered to be good heat conductors that reduce the heat level in the laser devices.
The strategy of optimization of a frequently used grating structure or mixed-order distributed feedback structure installed under the organic laser system medium to achieve optical feedback, the input energy required to keep the laser devices allows reducing to new lows.

These laser systems can be used in extreme environments, that is why searching for new laser techniques to take away any inefficiencies and prevent laser devices from overheating. Moreover, the combination of the organic laser modules with inorganic ones enables the production of colors that are difficult to create by employing a conventional type of lasers, with applications in process spectroscopy, communications, displays, and sensing systems.

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

Fiber laser systems do not leave scars after surgery of breast tumors

Fiber laser system allows women to have surgery for breast tumor removal without scars. The operation takes less than an hour and leaves only a tiny puncture mark. Thus, a new laser system treatment for breast cancer was recently approved for application in the UK, and it is planned to use fiber laser surgery in other countries.

To be more precise, the surgery by the fiber laser system requires just a local anesthetic. Frances Barr from Bristol became one of the first women in Britain to be subjected to a new laser system surgery for breast cancer. Compared to traditional surgery with a general anesthetic, laser technology is based on the use of local anesthetic.

The principle of fiber laser operation is based on a fine, hollow needle that is inserted through the breast tissue into the tumor, herewith, a fiber probe is brought through the needle and a hot laser beam attacks the tumor. It should be noted that after the injection of a local anesthetic into the front of the breast, the doctor applies a handheld ultrasound monitor to guide a needle towards the tumor.

When the tip of the needle achieves it, the fiber laser probe is inserted to defeat the cancerous tissue, herein, the patient is awake during the process. The woman said that she felt some inconveniences when the needle forced its way in, however, this was not painful. The dead tissue was also removed after the laser system surgery and no trace of cancer was left. The laser technology succeeded.

Compared to a lumpectomy procedure, fiber laser treatment does not present any major risks, however, the procedure can not be currently used for breast tumors bigger than 20 mm in diameter. Nonetheless, cancer surgery by fiber laser system is regarded to be particularly effective for older women with small breast tumors who may be less able to stand the traditional surgery. Also, the doctors have to be certain that the laser system treatment removes all cancer.

Every year about 25.000 women in the UK are exposed to a lumpectomy procedure for breast cancer, generally when the tumor has not spread. Conventional techniques are useful, however, leave scars that may become infected (1.5-10%). The new laser technology, in its turn, offers the same results, but without collateral damage because of the tiny size of the entry point.

The surgery by the fiber laser system takes only ten minutes to achieve the required laser beam temperature of 60 °C to 100 °C. Additionally, the laser system has heat fiber sensors that detect enough temperature eliminating the risk of damage to healthy tissue. Finally, only two tiny puncture marks are left, and it is not necessary to keep a patient at the hospital. Herewith, the main benefit of fiber laser treatment is the opportunity to repeat the process if scans reveal it didn’t destroy all of the tumors the first time around.

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Ultrafast fiber lasers for smart cloth

Recently waterproof energy-storing cloth for smart garments was developed on the basis of carbon dioxide and ultrafast fiber lasers. Researchers from Australia offer cost-efficient and scalable fiber laser technology that allows fast fabricating textiles with energy-storage devices installed inside them. The technology-based on CO2 laser system and ultrafast laser can produce a 10 × 10 cm smart-textile patch that has such benefits as waterproofing, stretchability, herewith, it can be easily integrated with energy-harvesting technologies.

To be more precise, the fiber laser technology promotes graphene supercapacitors (energy-storage devices) to be printed by laser systems directly onto textiles such as nylon. The principle of the technology is based on the combination of a supercapacitor printing by a fiber laser and a photovoltaic cell to create an efficient, washable, self-powering smart fabric. Additionally, the researchers confirm that such a laser system is able to overcome the main disadvantages of current e-textile energy-storage technologies.

It should be noted that the popular smart-fabrics industry finds numerous laser applications in wearable devices for “the consumer, healthcare, and defense sectors, including monitoring vital signs of patients, tracking the location and health status of soldiers in the field, and monitoring pilots and drivers for fatigue”. The most widespread laser system application is considered to be laser lithography.

The thing is that the researchers put an elastomer solution (polydimethylsiloxane) on one side of nylon textile while a solution of graphene oxide and binder is coated onto the other and dried to form a film 3 μm thick. Then CO2 laser and femtosecond laser are used to form the fabric. The carbon laser performs photothermal reduction, while the ultrafast fiber laser achieves a combination of photothermal and photochemical reduction. Thus, the researchers succeeded to produce supercapacitor electrodes 10 μm thick over an area of 100 cm2 with an interelectrode distance of 80 μm with the help of fiber laser systems.

Herewith, the laser beam power of 4.5 W up to 8 W is used for the photoreduction process. Finally, the researchers discovered that after washing and drying the resulting graphene-enhanced cloth 50 times in commercial laundering machines, the electrical conductivity of the thin film, produced by CO2 and ultrafast fiber lasers, remains virtually unchanged compared with its initial state.

It is planned that the fiber laser technology allows real-time storage of renewable energy for e-textiles, as well as a faster roll-to-roll fabrication based on multifocal fabrication and machine learning techniques. If you are looking for a fiber laser of high beam quality, you should choose the Optromix company.

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Laser Beams demonstrate a previously unseen matter phase

A team of researchers from the U.S. performs experiments with ultrafast laser beam pulses that allow creating a previously unseen phase of matter. For instance, adding energy to any material almost always changes its structure. However, new experiments by laser systems demonstrate the opposite: “when a pattern called a charge density wave in a certain material is hit with a fast laser beam pulse, a whole new charge density wave is created—a highly ordered state, instead of the expected disorder.”

The thing is that such laser technology may reveal hidden features in materials of all types. The researchers perform the experiment with ultrafast laser beam pulses by applying lanthanum tritelluride material that naturally changes into a layered structure. It should be noted that a wavelike pattern of electrons in high- and low-density areas creates spontaneously in the material, however, it is limited by a single direction within him.

Herewith, an ultrafast burst of laser beam light (less than a picosecond long) leads to the obliteration of the previous pattern and the creation of a new one. To be more precise, the novel pattern produced in the result of the laser system process is regarded as something that has never been observed before in this material. This pattern appears for only a flash, vanishing within a few more picoseconds.

It is not a discovery that matter can have two possible competitive states and that the dominant mode can suppress alternative modes. The laser technology, in its turn, reveals that different types of matter can have latent states lurking unseen if a technique is found to restrain the dominant state. It is possible to see by using ultrafast laser beam pulses at these competing states that are considered to have equivalent crystal structures due to the predictable, orderly patterns of their subatomic constituents.

The opportunity of laser systems that suppress other phases of matter may reveal completely new material features uncovering numerous new areas of application. This is the reason why it is highly necessary to discover material phases that can only be out of equilibrium. To be more precise, what is meant here are material states that would never be achieved without a technique, such as this system of laser beam pulses, for suppressing the dominant phase.

Traditionally, researchers transform chemical changes, or pressure, or magnetic fields to change the material phase, while now they apply laser beam light to perform these transformations. Finally, the results of laser technology may enable us to better understand the role of phase competition in other systems resulting in discovering higher-temperature superconductors and finding out why superconductivity appears in some materials at relatively high temperatures.

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Laser Systems oscillators for more powerful fiber lasers

Physicists from Switzerland have developed a sub-picosecond thin-disk laser system oscillator that performs a record-high 350-watt average output laser beam power resulting in a new standard for the creation of more powerful fiber lasers. Herewith, ultrafast laser beam sources are at the center of fundamental scientific researches and industrial applications of fiber laser systems, including high-field physics experiments with attosecond temporal resolution to micrometer-accuracy machining of materials.

Nonetheless, repetition rates of several megahertz and average output powers of hundreds of watts remain still required from laser systems to put the envelope forward. The most promising way to perform such high-power laser beam sources is to produce them by increasing the power output from fiber laser oscillators rather than applying multi-stage amplifiers because of their complexity. The thing is that power increasing results in reliable and potentially cost-effective fiber laser systems.

The physicists have recently put the power-scaling approach to a new level. To be more precise, they offer a laser beam source that provides both the simplicity and high repetition rates of laser system oscillators with record-high average output power from this type of fiber laser. The researchers use a thin-disk laser system oscillator as the base, “where the gain medium, the material in which the quantum processes leading to lasing take place, is shaped like a disk of around 100 micrometers thin”.

The thing is that the shape of such laser systems provides a relatively big surface area that favors cooling. Nevertheless, thermal effects remain the main disadvantage because of which the record output laser beam power was considered to be at 275 watts. At present, several advances in thin-disk laser technology enable the physicists to reach an average output power of 350 watts, with laser beam pulses that are only 940 femtoseconds long, they have an energy of 39 microjoules and repeat at an 8.88-megahertz rate. It should be noted that these parameters are the subject of constant interest in both scientific and industrial applications.

Finally, the physicists have succeeded in the development of a technique that allows several passes of the pump laser beam through the gain medium without inflicting detrimental thermal effects, therefore, decreasing the stress on the relevant components. The opportunity to check thermal effects makes it possible to overcome the limitations of the 275-W level. Moreover, it is planned to use these laser system oscillators for the future achievement of 500 W or even higher.

Optromix is a manufacturer of laser systems, optical fiber sensors, and optical monitoring systems. We develop and manufacture a broad variety of fiber lasers, high-powered fiber lasers, and other types. We offer simple laser products, as well as sophisticated fiber laser systems with unique characteristics, based on the client’s inquiry.

We manufacture laser modules using our technologies based on the advanced research work and patents of the international R&D team. Laser processes are of high quality, high precision, easily automated manufacturing solutions that provide repeatability and flexibility. If you have any questions or would like to buy a fiber laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

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