Desktop Ultra-Short Pulse Laser at 1552 nm

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Desktop Ultra-Short Pulse Laser at 1552 nm

• Ultrashort Pulse Laser Materials Interaction
  Workshop
• DIRECTED ENERGY PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY (DEPS)
• 9-28-06
• L. Vaissié, T. Yilmaz, A. Stadler, D. Goldman,
  M. Farley, J. Lammers,
• T. Saunders, K. Kim, D. Lijana, L. Collura, M.
  Mielke, T. Booth

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UltraShort Pulse (USP) Lasers
Long Pulse or CW Lasers
USP Lasers
Metal ablation with femtosecond (right) vs.
nanosecond (left) ablation.
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UltraShort Pulse (USP) Lasers

• Immense power in each pulse
• Non-thermal, precision ablation
• Little or no trauma/damage to remaining material
• Ablates any material
• Diagnostics, sensing, other non-ablative
  properties
• One source, many uses

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Interesting capabilities, but impractical
Compelling Capabilities, but Experimentation
and Exploration are Difficult Requires Ph.D.s to
operate and maintain Very Expensive
Impractical/Impossible to Deploy
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Until Raydiance
We took complicated apparatus
and turned it into this

• Pulse width lt 3 ps
• M2 lt 1.8
• Average Power 2.5 W

• Any room, 110 v outlet (800 W)
• Pulse energy 1 to 5 µJ
• Wavelength 1552.5 µm
• Pulse rate 25 kHz - 500 kHz

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Classic CPA Approach

• Mostly fiber-based components
• High power, dispersion and nonlinearity managed
  miniature optical network

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Fiber Integrated Hardware

• Use off-the-shelf fiber optics for seed pre-amp
  stages
• Team with strategic partners for subassemblies
• Build what we cant buy
• There are constraints
• Peak power density very high in fiber
• Operation near damage threshold
• Optical nonlinearities
• Novel fibers require special attention
• Multimode effects
• Parasitic energy losses due to high dopant levels

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Raydiance User Interface (UI)
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Desktop USP System Pulse Quality
Intensity Autocorrelation
Integrated Energy
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Further Signal Quality Data
Retrieved from FROG E-field FWHM 843 fs AC
FWHM 1.3 ps
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Pulse Train Extinction Data
Sensitive Measurement through RF Spectra
Raydiance High ER System
? lt 0.05 dB Harmonic Amplitude
Extinction Ratio, Rextgt 35 dB
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Raydiance Development Platform

• Disruptive USP capabilities
• Compact, reliable and cost-effective
• Intelligent laser makes USP easy to use
  integrate
• Liberates USP from specialized research labs
• Application experts, not laser Ph.D.s
• Practical to deploy

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Applications Examples
Early Adopters Validating Vision
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration

• Device Evaluation and Basic Research Under CRADA
• Up and running 30 minutes out of packing crate
• 150 days of intense exploration/experimentation
• MDs, not physicists (Johns Hopkins U of MD)
• Next generation LASIK
• Novel cancer treatment approaches
• DDS office of the future
• Gene transfection
• More experiments planned immune response,
  arthritis treatment, tattoo removal and many more

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Ophthalmic Experimentation

• Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins
• 1 ophthalmic program in country
• Intrastromal refractive surgery (flapless Lasik)
• Flap lock down designs and procedures
• Corneal transplant/implant procedures

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Oncology Experimentation

• FDA Research Group
• Effects of non-destructive irradiation
• Three lines of malignant cancers
• Various energy/rep rate levels
• Two weeks of experimentation

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Darrell B. Tata, Ph.D.
A Few Days Of Experimentation
Faster Time-to-Invention
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Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab

• Captive government lab DoD applications
• Up and running just like FDA system
• Distance interrogation and detection of materials
• Differentiate explosive, chemical and biological
  materials
• Define power (distance) specifications
• Evaluate feasibility for deployment for HLS and
  DoD
• Also may collaborate on medical applications

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Army Institute of Surgical Research

• Pioneer new clinical treatments/surgical
  approaches
• Smart-Knife prototype
• For treatment of profound burn trauma
• Smart laser differentiates healthy from
  unhealthy/dead tissue
• Rapidly ablate unhealthy tissue leave healthy
  tissue
• Less trauma, bleeding, better graft success

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J. Craig Venter Institute

• 1st to sequence the human genome
• Gene transfection
• Improve process in animal and plant transfection
• Could have huge impact on bio-agra business
• Could be critical to success of emerging
  synthetic biology sector
• For-profit enterprise spun out last year

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Other Projects

• Vaporizing tattoos
• Acne and sun damage treatment
• Pathology
• Minimally-invasive (fiber optic) smart-surgery
• Polymer and composite material processing
• Sub-dermal ablation
• Black silicon (solar energy)
• And many others in discussion

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USP Technology Directions
Near Term Development, 1552 nm Application Developers Kit
Pulse rate range 1 Hz to 500 kHz with constant energy, SW controlled
Shorter pulse duration lt 700 fs, SW maintained
Higher pulse energy tunable, 1 to 10 µJ, SW controlled
Fiber delivery revolutionary delivery of microjoule level pulses via optical fiber
SW linked into application equipment firmware
Visual display of laser characteristics (autocorrelation, optical spectrum, etc.)
Advanced RD Goals 1552 nm System 1060 nm System
Pulse Duration 500 fs 250 fs
Pulse Energy 100 µJ 2.5 mJ
Average Power 10 W 100 W
Pulse Rate 100 kHz 40 kHz
Optical-to-Optical Efficiency 20 25
Dispersion Control Tunable tp Pulse Shaping Tunable tp
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Raydiance Bragg Fiber for USP

• Large diameter, hollow core
• to sustain high peak power
• without appreciable distortion
• Delivery of ultrashort laser
• pulses
• Temporal pulse compression
• for all-fiber CPA systems

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Bragg Fiber for High Energy, USP Delivery
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Early Results

• USP light is versatile potentially very
  disruptive
• V1.0s relatively low power level is enabling
  important uses right out of gate
• Ease of use, computer-control supports rapid
  experimentation
• Developers/inventors beginning to stake claims
• Important discoveries
• IP capture
• Commercialization

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Product Roadmap Will Broaden Markets

• Increased Power
• Near term 10-25 µJ/pulse (on target)
• Navy project 2.5 mJ/pulse (on target)
• More features
• User adjustable pulse duration
• Broader rep rate ranges
• More software modules
• Fiber beam delivery
• Lower cost of goods initiatives to drive volume
  markets

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Commercialization A Platform Play
Production Version
Developer Platform
Volume Production
Application powered by Raydiance At
market-enabling cost of goods Owned by
Application Developer
Invention IP Development Concept
Validation Rapid Prototyping