Table of Contents
Fiber Laser Applications in Material Processing
Multimode fiber lasers have been used in concrete drilling and cutting. The reason behind the use of a fiber laser system in this application is the ability of fiber lasers to cut concrete without fracturing it. The concrete structures that are designed to be earthquake-proof often contain things like rebar to bolster their strength so they won’t just crumble if an earthquake hits. Conventional drilling techniques are not gentle enough for concrete structures. This is where fiber laser cutting systems are used.
Fiber laser systems are already used in other cutting and drilling applications; for example, Q-switched fiber lasers are used in pulsed materials working, such as laser marking or working semiconductor electronics, as well as for LIDAR.
Ultrafast Fiber Lasers for Micro- and Nanoscale Machining
There is a significant interest in smaller fiber lasers for micro-and nanoscale machining. For fiber lasers that have a short enough pulse duration, shorter than about 35 ps, no material splatter occurs during cutting or drilling, just ablation, eliminating the formation of kerfs and other unwanted artifacts on the metal being cut. Femtosecond fiber lasers are able to cut materials without heating the surrounding area, allowing material work without damaging or weakening the surrounding area. Moreover, holes can be cut with high aspect ratios, e.g., drilling rapidly drilling small holes through 1-mm-thick stainless.
Medical and Transparent Material Applications
Femtosecond fiber lasers are extremely useful in a variety of applications that deal with transparent materials. They are widely used in LASIK eye surgery, where femtosecond fiber lasers are used to cut flaps by being focused tightly with a high-numerical-aperture lens onto a spot below the eye’s surface, causing no damage at the surface, but a breakdown of the eye material at a controlled depth. Due to this, the cornea – an area of the eye that is crucial for vision – remains unharmed. Femtosecond fiber lasers, along with picosecond fiber lasers, are used in a variety of other medical applications, some of which include shallow-penetration surgery in dermatology and use in certain kinds of optical coherence tomography (OCT).
Scientific Applications of Ultrafast Fiber Lasers
There are many other areas of femtosecond fiber laser and picosecond fiber laser applications besides drilling and cutting. Scientific applications of femtosecond fiber lasers include laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy, and general materials research.