Innovation in optical components is a key factor in significantly lowering the cost of ownership of industrial lasers and accelerating their adoption in both existing and new applications. Coherent leverages its proprietary nanoimprint technology and design simulation tools to offer a new line of highly customized DOEs that achieve very high optical efficiency and extremely uniform laser beams. The DOEs are available with precision optical coatings that ensure high reliability in kilowatt-class industrial lasers for a wide range of applications, including for welding, cutting, and additive manufacturing.

“Our customers are very excited not only by the broad range of DOE designs that we can achieve, but also the very short lead times in which we can turn around a design, deliver product, and ramp to volume manufacturing,” said Dr Sanjai Parthasarathi, chief marketing officer. “Diffractive optics is promising to be a disruptive technology for next-generation industrial lasers. DOEs combine the ultimate in optics design flexibility with low-cost manufacturing, fueling a rapidly growing market that could soon exceed one billion dollars, according to industry analysts.”

DOEs offer a unique opportunity for industrial laser designers to combine multiple optical functions into one optical element, greatly simplifying system-level assembly. Such capabilities translate into much lower cost of ownership and greater reliability, due to the lower number of parts, the greater ease of optical alignment, and the lower number of failure mechanisms over time.

The new nanoimprint technology is optimized for the laser processing market. It expands Coherent’s existing DOE technology consisting of industry leading volume and surface Bragg gratings with applications in communications and medicine. Coherent also offers wafer-scale all-glass DOEs based on metasurfaces, or metaoptics elements (MOE), that are ideal for large volume applications such as in consumer electronics.

Further reading: “We have a number of exciting technology platforms that enable market megatrends” – interview with Sanjai Parthasarathi, chief marketing officer of Coherent Corp., PhotonicsViews 20(1), February/March 2023, pp. 20–21.