Manufacturing Technology Development of Advanced Components for High Power Solid State Lasers

摘要

The program has been successful in reaching the objective of developing a unique technology of Adhesive-Free Bond (AFB) composite crystals, optical ceramics, glasses and optical coatings. Major highlights of the program include: * AFB Nd:YAG/YAG composite slabs with undoped ends have enabled 100kW weapons level HEL (High Energy Lasers) through Onyx Optics manufacturing development. * AFB Passive q-switched microchips are in advanced development for Sidewinder missiles. * AFB Waveguide structures are in advanced development for a number of defense applications, with components of different sizes. * AFB Disk laser components are used in production laser machining systems. * AFB Nonlinear walk-off corrected crystal composites enable quasi-noncritical phase matching at any wavelengths that previously have only been accessible by critical phase matching and are relevant for infrared countermeasures (IRCM) and directed IRCM. * AFB Ho:YAG lasers have been designed and developed that exhibit the best beam quality and highest efficiency of any that have been reported in the literature. * Optical, mechanical and thermal properties of AFB composites have been characterized that have placed the technology on a solid data basis for design of composite components and scale up to production. * The program has enabled industry-wide scale-up of AFB composite crystal. * Components for solid state lasers that are concurrently being scaled up to prototype and production quantities at laser manufacturer and systems integrator facilities for wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the terahertz region. The customer base is world-wide.