Press release: LAMpAS announces that the target parameters of its kilowatt-class ultrafast laser have been reached

The EU-funded LAMpAS project has just announced that the target parameters of its kilowatt-class ultrafast laser have been reached. The pulsed laser developed by TRUMPF exceeds 1.5 kW of average optical power and operates at gigawatt-class peak power, with fundamental mode beam quality at a near-infrared wavelength of one micrometer. A demonstrator system will be integrated into a machine designed for industrial laser micro-machining of larger square-meter sized surfaces within the LAMpAS project.

Ph. D. Student Johanna Dominik recently presented the laser at the Advanced Solid State Lasers Conference 2021 [1]. Her system builds on TRUMPF’s commercially available TruMicro series 6000 based on InnoSlab technology as a front end [2], here operating at an average power of 300 W, followed by a thin-disk laser booster stage providing more than fivefold amplification [3]. This compact and efficient thin-disk multipass amplifier module is a technological break-through in robustness. The large area of the disk conveniently allows for generating an extreme peak power with no need for temporal post-compression of the pulses, which are adjustable in duration between 3 ps and 10 ps via the front-end.

The laser was specially developed for the unique demands of the LAMpAS project, including a narrow spectral bandwidth below 1 nm that is ideal for direct laser interference patterning. The linear amplifier chain particularly enables high flexibility including burst functionality as well as the full 1.5 kW average power over a wide range of repetition rates between 375 kHz to 5 MHz, compatible with fast scanners. LAMpAS targets surface functionalization such as anti-icing or anti-bacterial properties, optimized via well-controlled multi-scale topographical features (www.lampas.eu).

[1] J. Dominik et al., “Multi-Kilowatt Ultrafast Laser with Thin-Disk Technology”, in Laser Congress 2021 (ASSL, LAC), OSA Technical Digest (Optical Society of America, 2021), paper https://www.osapublishing.org/abstract.cfm?uri=ASSL-2021-AM2A.6.

[2] see TRUMPF homepage: https://www.trumpf.com/en_INT/products/laser/short-and-ultrashort-pulse-laser/trumicro-series-6000 (2021)

[3] J. Dominik et al., “Thin-disk multipass amplifier for kilowatt-class ultrafast lasers above 100 mJ,” 2021 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC), 2021, doi: 10.1109/CLEO/Europe-EQEC52157.2021.9542612.

Please watch the video here.