Element Six Joins EU Disk-Laser Development Project

Element Six has been chosen to help develop a new ultrafast-pulse disk laser for the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Program for Research and Technological Development.

The supermaterials company will be part of a multinational team staffed with engineers from the University of Stuttgart, the National Center for Scientific Research, Thales Optronics, Oxford Lasers and M-Squared Lasers.

The new laser will be designed as a femtosecond system that will allow extremely high-precision lasing and high average output power for increased productivity in the micromachining of transparent materials such as glass and ceramics, commonly used in smartphones and tablets.

Existing powerful, ultrafast lasers typically operate in the picosecond range.

Element Six’s single-crystal CVD diamond will be used in the development and construction of a new ultrafast-pulse disk laser. Courtesy of Element Six.

As part of this project, Element Six will further develop its low-loss, high-purity, single-crystal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond material to rapidly conduct heat off a titanium sapphire (Ti:S) thin-disk gain medium.

Ti:S is optimal for short-pulse laser systems because of its broad bandwidth emission. However, it lacks good thermal properties, which the engineers said could be improved with the single-crystal CVD diamond as a heat spreader.

“The low-loss single-crystal CVD diamond material … offers a unique combination of properties, including the highest room-temperature thermal conductivity of any bulk material, allowing it to be used as a transparent heat spreader inside the resonator of high-power thin-disk lasers, generating heat flow densities that cannot be handled with other materials,” said Dr. Andreas Voss, a researcher at the University of Stuttgart.

For more information, visit www.e6.com.