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Workhorse Laser with
Subnanosecond
Pulse Widths 

Uniphase's Passively Q-Switched
DPSS Laser Has Beam Quality to Rival the HeNe

 

Introduction

Ever since the laser was invented in 1960, large-scale commercial applications for laser technology have been limited by the nature of the lasers themselves. In general, they have not only been large, inefficient, and very expensive, but have also required a high level of maintenance and tender loving care to maintain their performance. As a consequence, only the helium-neon and the diode lasers have experienced sales in excess of a few thousand units per year. But even these lasers have their drawbacks. Helium-neon lasers are low in cost and exhibit excellent beam quality; however, they are inefficient, their size grows dramatically with increasing output power, and they are relatively fragile. Diode lasers are small, inexpensive, and robust but generally exhibit relatively poor beam quality.

Today, NanoLasersTM -- monolithic diode-pumped, passively Q-switched solid-state microchip lasers -- closely approach the ideal. These new devices produce high-intensity, linearly polarized laser light with superb beam quality in a variety of wavelengths ranging from the infrared to the ultraviolet -- all from small, extremely rugged, maintenance-free modules that can be manufactured in high volume at very low cost. In 1995 Uniphase Corporation, a leading manufacturer of helium-neon and air-cooled argon-ion lasers for OEM applications, and Daniel Guillot, formerly president of Uniphase Laser Division, formed a joint venture, Nanolase SA, to develop this new technology commercially.

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