High-power semiconductor lasers are rarely seen in daily life because of their high price, so do you know where they are mainly used? Let's take a look at it together

Nowadays, the manufacturing industry relies heavily on laser processing, and the high-power semiconductor laser is the "heart" of the whole laser system. It can be directly used as a processing light source, and can also be used as a pumping source for fiber lasers and solid-state lasers. For example, before our factory, we helped our customers debug a metal welding equipment, which used a multi-core stacked high-power semiconductor laser with an output power of several hundred watts, not to mention welding stainless steel plates and copper pieces. Compared with traditional CO2 laser or YAG laser, semiconductor laser has higher energy conversion efficiency, smaller volume and lower maintenance cost.

Many solid-state lasers actually rely on semiconductor lasers. Simply put, it is responsible for providing energy and making the crystal work. Especially, high-power semiconductor lasers in 808nm, 915nm and 940nm bands are almost the standard of all kinds of solid-state laser systems. The real charm of semiconductor laser lies in its "expansibility".

From a few hundred milliwatts to several kilowatts, it can hold up as long as you have proper heat dissipation and driving design. Like a multi-channel stacked output module made by our laboratory, the output of dozens of small chips is combined into one optical fiber through micro-fiber coupling, and the power is easily broken. That kind of brightness is really red when the whole station is turned on.

Of course, high-power lasers are also troublesome. Heat dissipation is the biggest problem. We often say that "lasers are afraid of heat", especially semiconductors. When the temperature is high, the threshold current will rise, the wavelength will drift and the efficiency will decrease. Many engineers didn't do a good job in thermal design when they made the power superposition module for the first time. As a result, the optical decay of the chip was serious and its life was greatly reduced.

Therefore, in practical engineering applications, I generally suggest that the higher the power, the more attention should be paid to heat dissipation, driving and packaging. For example, modules with butterfly package or water cooling plate structure are more expensive, but their stability and life are much better.

To sum up, the advantages of high-power semiconductor lasers are high efficiency, small size, fast response and easy control. From a technical point of view, it is one of the most mature and flexible high-power light sources at present.