The Characteristics And Application Scope Of The Five Types Of Lasers

Lasers is one of the essential core components in modern laser processing systems. With the development of laser processing technology, lasers are also constantly developing, and many new lasers have emerged.

Early laser processing lasers were mainly high-power CO2 gas lasers and lamp-pumped solid YAG lasers, and the development trend was mainly towards increasing laser power. However, when the laser power reaches a certain requirement, the beam quality of the laser begins to receive attention, and the development of lasers shifts to improving the beam quality. Semiconductor lasers, fiber lasers and disc lasers are successively developed, making materials processing, medical, aviation Aerospace, automobile manufacturing and other fields have achieved rapid development.

CO2 lasers, Nd:YAG lasers, semiconductor lasers, disc lasers and fiber lasers are the five most common types of lasers currently on the market. What are their respective characteristics and application ranges?

CO2 laser
Application: The laser wavelength of the CO2 laser is 10.6um and has a low absorption coefficient for metals. It is generally suitable for cutting non-metallic materials and can be used for welding of metallic materials. It can be widely used in welding applications in aviation, electronic instruments, machinery, automobiles and other fields.

Nd:YAG laser
Application: YAG laser has a high absorption coefficient for metal and can be used for metal cutting, welding, marking and other applications. Due to its characteristics of large energy, high peak power, compact structure, strong durability, and reliable performance, it is widely used in industry, national defense, medical, scientific research and other fields.

Semiconductor laser
Application: Semiconductor lasers are limited by the high uniformity of the laser beam and poor penetration, so they are not suitable for metal cutting applications. However, their spot characteristics are suitable for metal surface treatment, such as cladding, hardening, 3D printing, etc. . It can be widely used in aerospace, medical, automotive and other fields.

Disc laser
Application: The disc laser is a spatial optical path coupling structure, so the beam quality is very high. It is suitable for laser material applications such as metal cutting, welding, marking, laser cladding, hardening and 3D printing. It is widely used in automobile manufacturing. , aerospace, precision machinery, 3C electronics and other fields.

Fiber-optic laser
Application: Due to its high electro-optical conversion efficiency, good metal absorption coefficient and high beam quality, fiber laser can be used for metal cutting, welding, marking, metal surface treatment and other applications. Widely used in aerospace, automobile manufacturing, 3C electronics, medical and other fields.

Compared with traditional CO2 lasers and YAG solid lasers, semiconductor lasers have obvious technical advantages, such as small size, light weight, high efficiency, low energy consumption, long life, and high metal absorption of semiconductor lasers. With the continuous development of semiconductor laser technology, other solid-state lasers based on semiconductor lasers, such as fiber lasers, direct output fiber semiconductor lasers and disc lasers, are also developing rapidly. Among them, fiber lasers have developed rapidly, especially rare earth-doped fiber lasers, which have been widely used in fields such as fiber communications, fiber sensing, and laser material processing.

Fiber laser has attracted much attention in recent years and has become the focus of everyone's research. This is because it has advantages that other lasers cannot match, which are mainly reflected in:

(1) The beam quality is good and has very good monochromaticity, directionality and stability;

(2) Optical fiber is both a laser gain medium and a light waveguide medium. Therefore, the coupling efficiency of pump light is quite high. The fiber core diameter is small, and high power density is easily formed within the fiber. In addition, fiber lasers can easily extend the gain length. , in order to fully absorb the pump light and make the total light-to-light conversion efficiency exceed 60%;

(3) The matrix material is Si02, which has excellent temperature stability; while the cylindrical structure of the optical fiber has a high surface area/volume ratio and fast heat dissipation. The ambient temperature is allowed to be -20-+7000C, and the heat of its working material is The load is quite small, no cooling system is required, and it can produce high brightness and high peak power, reaching 140mw/cm2;

(4) It is small in size, simple in structure, and the working material is a flexible medium. It can be designed to be quite compact and flexible, easy to use, easy to integrate into the system, and has high cost performance;

(5) As a laser medium, doped optical fiber has an extremely rich energy level structure doped with rare earth ions. The energy level transition covers a wide band from ultraviolet to infrared, and many transition energy levels can be achieved for laser oscillation. It can be designed and operated in a wide spectral range (455-3500nm). In addition, the fluorescence spectrum of glass fiber is quite wide. By inserting an appropriate wavelength selector, a tunable fiber laser can be obtained, and the tuning range has reached 80nm;

(6) The silicon optical fiber process is now very mature, so high-precision, low-loss optical fibers can be produced, greatly reducing the cost of lasers.

(7) It has natural flexibility and compatibility with conventional transmission optical fibers in terms of materials and geometric dimensions, so it is easy to integrate optical fibers, has low coupling loss and is easy to use.

(8) Can work under harsh environmental conditions, such as high impact, high vibration, high temperature, etc.

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