Manufacturing Laser Glass by Continuous Melting.

摘要

A novel, continuous melting process is being used to manufacture meter-sized plates of laser glass at a rate 20-times faster, 5-times cheaper, and with 2-3 times better optical quality than with previous one-at-a-time, discontinuous technology processes. This new technology for manufacturing laser glass, which is arguably the most difficult continuously-melted optical material ever produced, comes as a result of a $60 million, six-year joint R&D program between government and industry. The glasses manufactured by the new continuous melting process are Nd-doped phosphate-based glasses and are marketed under the product names LG-770 (Schott Glass Technologies) and LHG-8 (Hoya Corporation USA). With this advance in glass manufacturing technology, it is now possible to construct high-energy, high-peak-power lasers for use in fusion energy development, national defense, and basic physics research that would have been impractical to build using the old melting technology. The development of continuously melted laser glass required technological advances that have lead to improvements in the manufacture of other optical glass products as well.