Project Brief
General Competition (December 1992)Incoherent Combining of Radiation from a Two-Dimensional Array of Semiconductor LasersDevelop micromachining techniques to mass-produce corrective lenses for laser diode arrays, and incorporate with diffractive optics in a low-cost, high-power laser technology suitable for surgical applications. Sponsor: Cynosure, Inc.35 Wiggins AvenueBedford, MA 01730
For some laser applications, the coherence of the light is not as important as raw, concentrated power. Surgical lasers are a good example -- the typical surgical laser is a 100-watt YAG laser costing about $70,000. An array of semiconductor laser diodes could provide that power in a much cheaper and more compact package if the beams could be collimated efficiently in a tight beam. Diffractive optics transformers have been demonstrated that can do this, but they are very sensitive to the geometry of the laser diode array: minor inaccuracies in the alignment of the individual lasers can greatly degrade the performance of the system. The solution, proposes Cynosure, is to give the lasers prescription corrective lenses -- a customized lenslet array to correct the beams before they reach the transformer. The market is very sensitive to price, however, so the trick is to make custom lenslet arrays so cheaply and efficiently that the technology can be used for viable products. Cynosure proposes to demonstrate an automated system to custom mill arrays of 200 corrective lenses to match arrays of 200 laser diodes. Diagnostic equipment will measure the decollimation and boresight error of each of the 200 beams, feeding the results to a computer, which will drive an excimer laser to mill the lens array in less than 10 minutes. Success in this project will make possible efficient, low-cost, high-power laser sources based on diode lasers, which likely will lead to a greatly expanded market for high-power laser diodes as new applications are developed -- any application where a concentrated spot of light or heat is needed. The ability to custom-tailor diffractive optics by excimer laser, the basic goal of this project, will have broad application in the rapidly growing field of micro-optics, including communications, image recognition, robotic vision, and optical computing.
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