Where Is The Future Of Semiconductor Lasers?

With the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry to high-end and intelligence, the laser equipment processing application market continues to expand. Moore, one of the founders of Moore's Law, predicted in 1965 that semiconductors would develop rapidly, and electronics would gain widespread popularity and penetrate into a wide range of applications. Looking back half a century later, this prediction has been perfectly confirmed. Although fiber lasers have great market potential, the most widely used semiconductor lasers are currently on the market.

Semiconductor lasers are commonly known as laser diodes. Because of its characteristics of using semiconductor materials as working substances, it is called semiconductor lasers. The working substances usually used in semiconductor lasers are gallium arsenide, cadmium sulfide, indium phosphide, etc., which can be used as a pump source for fiber lasers and solid-state lasers, and can also directly output laser as a light source.

The development of semiconductor lasers began in the 1960s and has now been widely promoted and applied in all walks of life. With the advantages of compact structure, good beam quality, long life and stable performance, it has made great strides in communication, material processing and manufacturing, military, medical and other fields. It is precisely because the application field of laser equipment is very wide and involves many industries, so the market size of semiconductor lasers is very large. According to the data of OFweek industry research, the market size of semiconductor lasers in 2017 was as high as 5.31 billion US dollars, with a year-on-year growth rate of up to 15%, occupying 40% of the overall market share of lasers, which is an absolute dominant position.

With the continuous in-depth development of semiconductor technology, market demand continues to shift. The application field of semiconductor lasers is also constantly changing. From the initial low-power equipment to the current high-power equipment, semiconductor lasers have also been transferred from some light processing fields to heavy processing fields.

As early as the 1980s, semiconductor lasers were only used in optical storage and some niche applications. At the time, optical storage was the first large-scale application in the semiconductor laser industry. The continuous innovation of semiconductor laser technology has promoted the development of optical storage technologies such as injection digital multifunction disc (DVD) and Blu-ray Disc (BD). By the 1990s, optical networks had become the main battleground for semiconductor lasers. Then in the 1990s, semiconductor lasers became the key processing and manufacturing equipment for communication networks.

At present, the largest application of semiconductor lasers is as a pump source for fiber lasers and solid-state lasers. When the semiconductor laser is used as the pump source of the fiber laser, the structure of the pump system can be fundamentally simplified by improving the unit power, and the pump power level can be improved. With the increasing output power requirements of fiber lasers and solid-state lasers, the power of semiconductor pump sources is also put forward higher requirements.

Due to the limitation of beam quality, traditional semiconductor lasers are difficult to be directly used for metal cutting. In recent years, with the improvement of semiconductor coupling technology and the gradual maturity of new beam combining technology, some semiconductor lasers with fiber output above kilowatt level can also meet the requirements of beam quality for cutting. In addition, due to the diversity of the wavelength of the semiconductor laser, the wavelength of the short-wavelength semiconductor laser is very close to the maximum wavelength absorption of aluminum. Therefore, in the automotive industry, high-power semiconductor lasers are very suitable for welding aluminum car bodies. At present, semiconductor lasers with laser output power between 2KW and 6KW have been widely used in the production process of the automotive industry.

In the field of direct material processing, the beam quality of semiconductor lasers is difficult to surpass that of fiber lasers. However, in thin plate welding and cutting applications, semiconductor lasers are very suitable. The development of high-power semiconductor lasers has made many important applications possible. These lasers have replaced many traditional technologies and have given us many new products.

The key advantages of Semiconductor Laser of  Xi'an Guosheng Laser :

1. Small size: Very small and compact, making them ideal for use in a wide range of applications where space is limited.

2. Efficiency: Very efficient, meaning that they convert a high proportion of their input power into laser light. This makes them ideal for use in applications where energy consumption is a concern.

3. Wavelength tunability: Could be tuned to emit light at different wavelengths, allowing them to be used in a wide range of applications, from telecommunications to medical imaging.

4. Low cost: Relatively inexpensive to manufacture compared to other types of lasers, which makes them accessible to a wide range of industries and applications.

5. Reliability: Has a long operational lifetime and are very reliable, making them ideal for use in applications where downtime is not an option.

6. High modulation rate: Can be modulated at high speeds, making them ideal for use in applications such as optical communications and data storage.