Montfort Laser

Technology

 

MONTFORT Laser specializes on very compact diode-pumped solid-state lasers, based on laser materials including Nd:YAG, Nd:Vanadate, Nd:YLF, Ytterbium-doped Double Tungstates, Ytterbium-doped Oxide Crystals and others. Exceptional laser performance, given the size and weight, are achieved. From Nd:YAG we achieve up to >100 mJ pulse energy from a palm-sized laser head module. From Ytterbium-doped laser oscillators we obtain multi-Watt sub-100-fs or multi-Watt narrow-linewidth 1-ps ultrafast pulse generation, and up to >100W with integrated amplifier.

 

Competences Patents

 

 

 

Competences

 

The team has profound experience and skills in the following areas:

 

 

Diode-pumping of Solid-State Lasers

Diode-pumping is our business!  Based on more than 20 years of experience in the field of DPSSLs - Diode-pumped Solid State Lasers -, we pick the best diode-pumping scheme for your application's target laser parameters, or come up with a new concept optimized for your requirements. Besides diode-pumping, we use solid state laser crystals only and achieve output parameters such as energy and peak power that are exclusive to such solid state lasers (and impossible from fiber lasers).   

Design & Simulation of Low-Sensitivity, Robust Laser Resonators

We simulate laser resonators with ABCD and ABCDEF algorithms for stable resonators, as well as home-written physical wave propagation simulations for advanced unstable laser resonator schemes, the following graph showing an example result for such simulation.

Semiconductor Saturable Absorber Mirrors (SeSAMs) for ultrafast pulse generation

Having been among the pioneers of this technology, our team has extended experience both with the science of these devices and the commercialization inside industry-proven laser sources.  The Semiconductor saturable absorber mirror is simply used as one of the laser mirrors inside the laser cavity and starts and stabilizes the modelocking - the femtosecond or picosecond generation - in a robust way.  The laser resonator does not have to be operated close to the edge of its stability regime unlike in Kerr lens based setups. 

This allows for the implementation of sensitivity-optimized robust laser oscillator cavities for femtosecond or picosecond pulse generation.

Tolerancing

Integrated part of our laser development projects is tolerancing of optical and opto-mechanical designs as well as individual components.  We predict and test the tolerances of setups we build and confirm producibility in an early stage of product development.  Home-written ABCDEF algorithms allow for optimization of laser resonators, reducing the angle-sensitivity of optical components by an order of magnitude over existing, state-of-the art laser layouts.  Component testing with home-built test setups allow for the characterization of optical components, laser crystals, laser diodes, etc. before build-up and ensures the viability of setups in an early developmental state.  As one of many examples we show the temporal optical spectrum analysis of the laser emission of certain commercial QCW kilo-Watt-type laser diodes in the following graph.

3D opto-mechanical design & FEM

Projects are goverened and managed by way of 3D opto-mechanical design and finite-element analysis wherever appropriate.

Prototyping to production engineering

Prototypes and production engineering is performed in close collaboration with experienced manufacturing, logistics and assembly partners and enables efficient project completion.  A class-100 clean room area ensures clean optical setups and assemblies.  State-of-the-art laser diagnostics equipment allows well-defined laser performance characterization including noise, energy stability statistics and laser beam characterization following ISO 11146.

 

Patents

 

We follow an active patenting policy in order to secure exclusive rights for the compact setups we develop.  We have patents pending which cover the compact 50-100-mJ-level <10-ns Nd:YAG laser setup and a very compact ultrafast laser setup.