Bookham Inc. of San Jose, Calif., announced today at Photonics West 2008 (Booth 1207), being held this week at the San Jose Convention Center, that Laserline has selected its very-high-brightness (VHB) bar to support its high-brightness direct diode laser systems. Volker Krause, managing director and co-founder of Laserline, a German manufacturer of direct-diode laser systems for industrial material processing, said, "The VHB bar, with its unique form factor, is the perfect match for our high-brightness direct-diode systems, as it features the Bookham hard-solder technology to support the typical intermittent operation mode we find in industrial and automotive applications." The VHB bar has a power output of 80 W, up to four times the brightness of a typical 10-mm bar, and is only 3.2-mm wide. It supports direct industrial laser systems and enables fiber coupling without beam transformation optics by delivering high-output power at a narrow emitting area. Bookham also announced this week it has shipped more than 4 million polarization-stabilized VCSELs (vertical extended cavity surface-emitting laser) for optical computer mouse applications and that it is now manufacturing them at its high-power laser facility in Zurich, Switzerland, to meet volume demand from consumer applications. The VCSELs were previously made at the Zurich facilities of Avalon Photonics, which Bookham acquired in 2006.