5 kW transversely excited atmospheric CO2laser driven by a solid state exciter employing insulated gate bipolar transistors

摘要

An average laser output power as high as 5 kW has been produced from a transversely excited atmospheric CO2laser pumped with a new solid state exciter. The exciter providing a 100 J transfer energy consisted of a high voltage pulse generator and a two stage magnetic pulse compressor. A stack of new high power semiconductor switches, called insulated gate bipolar transistors, was employed for the main switch of the pulse generator. A sophisticated discharge head with the corona preionization behind a perforated anode was designed to realize fast and uniform gas flow in cooperation with acoustic dampers. The maximum average laser power of 4.6 kW was attained at a repetition rate of 550 pps with an overall efficiency as high as 10.5percnt;. The maximum repetition rate achieved was 1.1 kpps, at which the resulting average laser power was 3.4 kW.