An Overview Of Industrial Laser Diodes

Laser diodes have a lot of uses in todays world

, from military applications to telephony, metrology and healthcare. There are many common modes of operation and a wide variety of structures to fit projected industrial purposes.

How Laser Diodes Operate

A laser diode is similar to a light-emitting diode (LED) in that it contains as its effective medium a semiconductor. The most common kind of diode is found at a p-n junction (the line between p-type and n-type semiconductors) that is created by a process called doping. These junctions are then run by injected electric currents and are referred to as injection laser diodes to differentiate them from optically pumped laser diodes.

Many diodes discharge in continuous wave (cw) mode anywhere from many watts down to just milliwatts of power. These types of industrial diodes lack the capacity to be overdriven and even small instances of exceeding the maximum power could cause problems for laser resonators and effectively de-activate the laser. For commercial applications that demand a considerable amount of peak power usage time, pulsed laser diodes are able to be overdriven proficiently and simply for short time periods. To accomplish that, short pulses are accompanied by pauses, keeping the pulse lengths in the 200ns range. These pulses of light are produced by laser currents that lessen inductive loss through the use of fast switching transistors and particularly short electrical connections.

Laser Structures Through the years

Laser diode technology was initially showcased at the IBM T.J Watson Research Center during the early 1960s. Ever since that time, it has rapidly transformed in form and technology. Traditional diodes used a layering of crystals generally known as liquid phase epitaxy, or LPE. In the 1970s, they had transitioned into organometallic chemical vapor deposition and molecular beam epitaxy. Over the next few decades, those formats have been extended to incorporate VSELs (Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers), VECSELs (Vertical Extended Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers), and external cavity diode lasers. In addition to a big list of other laser diode forms, many of these type

s further separate into subcategories.

Common Industrial Uses

Some of the more compact varieties of laser diodes are used in laser printers, bar code scanners, laser pointers and CD planners. But the bigger diodes are utilized in many important defense applications, such as the pulsed laser rangefinders in military tanks and guided energy strike systems that generate powerful light to wipe out land mines, rockets, mortar rounds and other ordinances. The healthcare community benefits through the use of this modern technology through cosmetic purposes such as Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) for hair, age spot, and wrinkle removal, other lasers for soft tissue surgery, and even in dental care for treatments as diverse as cavity removal and tooth whitening. Vertical extended cavity surface emitting lasers (VECSELs) are necessary for big screen televisions and other commercial uses. Other various uses for laser diodes consist of welding and cutting of metals and other industrial elements, fiber optics for telecommunications systems, laser levels for surveying, and the taking of accurate 3D measurements.

by: Gary Mandela

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