Oct 31 2007
Alfalight, Inc., an innovative manufacturer of highly efficient and reliable high-power diode lasers, announced today that it has received a $1.2 million contract from the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Adelphi, MD. This 12-month program, entitled "High Brightness Diode Sources" (HiBriDS) will enable Alfalight to leverage the results of two previous programs in order to create laser diode modules with higher brightness and reliability than current technology diode lasers can provide.
The new laser design will also have less-demanding manufacturing tolerance requirements, allowing resultant products to be more cost-effective and robust. Combined with Alfalight's industry-leading power conversion efficiency and proven packaging expertise, this program will generate a pump laser solution that will enable improved fiber lasers for a broad range of industrial and defense applications.
"Past contracts from ARL have helped Alfalight to improve the spatial brightness of laser diodes," said Manoj Kanskar, vice president of Research and Development at Alfalight. "This new program will allow us to further push brightness and power and enable us to develop high power arrays which can be cost-effectively fiber coupled."
Results of this program will allow power scaling into kilowatt-class arrays for pumping fiber lasers and solid-state gain media, and as direct diode sources for applications such as marking, cutting, welding and materials processing.