Lumentum has reduced the size of its PicoBlade ultrafast laser. The PicoBlade 2 provides additional capabilities in a footprint 50 per cent smaller than its predecessor. PicoBlade 2 will be displayed on Lumentum’s booth at Photonics West in San Francisco, 16-18 February.
Ultrafast laser pulses, with proper energy density and wavelength, can process materials where thermal effect must be eliminated, including drilling and texturing of metals and cutting wafers, polymeric stents, display processes, and specialty glass used in mobile devices.
PicoBlade 2 offers FlexBurst and MegaBurst functionality to give users the ability to split the energy of a single pulse (single pulse mode) into a group of pulses (burst mode). Correctly aligning this capability with the type of material processed can further minimise heat effect and increase the ablation rate from the cutting sample.
The laser also has a function called AccuTrig, providing accurate triggering function for on-the-fly processing capabilities. In addition, Sync enables precise timing control for applications benefitting from the increased productivity achieved with high-speed galvo or line scanners.
PicoBlade 2, like the previous PicoBlade generation, incorporates Lumentum’s wear-and-tear free semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) technology. This gives PicoBlade 2 robustness and ensures excellent long-term stability. In addition, PicoBlade 2 has one of the largest frequency operating ranges, from single shot to 8MHz. This ability, when coupled to Sync, provides the necessary combination to make the most of high-speed polygon line scanning for high-volume manufacturing.