The development trend of laser technology
The application of laser technology can cover almost every field of production and life. From automobile manufacturing, power battery, to mobile phone manufacturing, aerospace, medical equipment, and even national defense and military, almost all fields we can think of, lasers are active; For many industries, laser technology has become an indispensable supporting technology. As we all know, the core of Made in China 2025 is intelligent manufacturing. One of the cores of intelligent manufacturing is optoelectronic technology, and one of the cores of optoelectronic technology is laser. Therefore, although the market scale of the laser industry itself is small, it is a core force driving the development of the manufacturing industry, and its importance is self-evident.
As a core driving force in the field of industrial manufacturing, laser technology itself is also constantly moving forward. In summary, lasers are developing in the four major directions of 'faster, higher, better, and shorter'.
Higher: The power of lasers is getting higher and higher. In 2013, the first commercial 100,000-watt fiber laser was installed at the NADEX Center in Nagoya, Japan, for welding 300mm thick steel plates. Laser cutting applications are also developing towards higher power. The power of laser cutting machines continues to rise, reaching 20kW.
Better: The beam quality of laser output is getting better and better, and the beam quality of fiber laser has reached 100,000 watt single mode. In the past few years, the brightness of fiber lasers, disc lasers, and direct semiconductor lasers has been greatly improved.
Shorter: The output wavelength of the laser covers a shorter wavelength band, and short-wavelength lasers have been widely used. Many advanced manufacturing processes require cold processing. For example, in the manufacturing of smartphones, short-wavelength, short-pulse ultraviolet lasers are often used for processing. Short-wavelength lasers have been widely used in areas such as surface marking, semiconductor wafer processing, drilling, and cutting.
Faster: The pulse speed of lasers is getting faster and faster, and ultrafast lasers have achieved rapid development. With simpler structure, more convenient operation, lower cost and more stable performance, Step out of the laboratory and enter industrial applications.