Product Portfolio
With its portfolio of gas laser comprises of pulsed CO2 lasers, excimer lasers and HeCd lasers, AMS Technologies offers an unbeatable combination of laser performance, reliability, customer support and value. Our breadth of experience in industrial and academic applications for these lasers is unrivalled. In addition, we provide comprehensive support including installation, service, spare parts and training to new and existing customers.
Pulsed CO2 Lasers
Our pulsed CO2 lasers are optimized for 24/7 precision materials processing and drilling of non-metallic materials.
High-reliability SSM switch technology as well as gas filtering systems ensure very high uptimes and low maintenance for the pulsed CO2 laser series with 75 W power delivery. Higher-power (up to 300 W) short-pulse CO2 lasers are suitable for surface layer removal and cleaning, non-destructive testing, and photochemistry – with the highest repetition rate model intended primarily as a source for laser ultrasound testing.
Fully configurable, thyratron-switched, pulsed CO2 lasers with up to 12 MW peak power are designed for scientific and specialized applications like ultrasound or infrared chemistry. These lasers can be configured with a tuneable option and set up in a master oscillator / power amplifier (MOPA) configuration with additional amplifiers to achieve the right power at the right wavelength for your application.
A series of CO2 lasers dedicated to on-line marking and coding creates perfect, crisp images on your products 24/7. These lasers provide a fast, reliable means of applying high-quality permanent marks such as date and batch codes to a broad spectrum of products ranging from consumer product packages like beer labels, gelatine capsules or hair colour tubes to miniature electronic components.
Excimer Lasers
Our excimer lasers deliver high-power ultraviolet laser machining combined with state-of-the-art performance. Incorporating a proprietary “integrated ceramic on nickel” technology, these lasers offer long excimer gas lifetimes, superior optical stability and precise control of laser operating parameters. Easy to use, simple to service and economical to operate, they combine the benefits of high-precision excimer processing with the lowest total cost of ownership and highest uptime in the market today.
Our excimer laser series for medium-duty-cycle-operation in industrial and R&D environments is used by leading R&D scientists all over the world, ideal for applications such as pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Excimer lasers designed for high-duty-cycle-operation in a manufacturing environment are versatile industrial tools suitable for many demanding applications like marking of ceramics.
HeCd Lasers
A series of Helium-Cadmium (HeCd) metal-vapour gas laser systems is available, comprising models with an output wavelength of 325 nm (UV), 442 nm (Blue), or combining both wavelengths in a dual-wavelength version. All of this series’ lasers average lifetimes of 4,500 h or more, with some models even averaging over 8,000 h.
Related Products
Complementing AMS Technologies’ gas lasers, our broad portfolio of lasers and light sources encompasses many additional laser sources like DPSS lasers, diode lasers or OPOs and tunable lasers – and also includes an exceptionally broad portfolio of laser diodes and modules for a wide variety of wavelengths and optical output powers. Further light sources are available like LED chips, components, modules and light sources, SLED modules and light sources, broadband, ASE and supercontinuum light sources, or other lasers and light sources.
For reliably cooling laser systems, laser components and light sources, we carry a very wide thermal management portfolio, ranging from components like thermoelectric, Peltier modules (TECs), heat sinks and fans to TEC- or compressor-based plate to air thermal management assemblies like our mini direct cooling thermoelectric kit to liquid to air thermal management assemblies like recirculating chillers.
Laser safety products available from AMS Technologies include protective eyewear as well as laser safety windows, curtains and cabins.
Our large portfolio of precision optics, manufactured of various optical materials and coated to very specific and demanding tolerances, including disk-shaped optical beamsplitters, optical scanners and deflectors, optical mirrors, windows, filters, lenses, prisms, polarization optics or etalons.
Additionally, we offer a broad range of complementary products such as optical mounts, rotary and translation stages, optical tables, breadboards and platforms as well as a variety of optical test and measurement equipment.
Definition
In the gas-filled resonator of a gas laser, coherent light is usually generated by electrical discharge, with discharge currents ranging from a few mA to kA for pulse excitation. With this gas as the active medium, the gas laser generates high radiation powers in a broad spectrum from ultraviolet to far infrared.
The lasing medium of a CO2 laser is carbon dioxide, producing an infrared light beam in the main wavelength bands around 9.6 µm and 10.6 μm. Next to solid-state lasers, CO2 lasers are among the most powerful and most frequently used lasers in industry. As CO2 lasers emit infrared light, common optical materials such as quartz glass cannot be used for their construction. Mirrors are usually coated with silver or gold, windows and lenses are made of semiconductors such as Germanium or Zinc-Selenide – diamond windows and lenses are sometimes also used.
Applications of CO2 lasers with tens to a few hundreds of watts are cutting, perforating or engraving thin organic materials. Pulsed CO2 lasers are mostly used for scribing or cutting inorganic materials. Examples of applications are wire-stripping and other precision machining of components for medical devices, drilling of controlled-release pharmaceutical capsules, drilling and processing flexible and high density printed circuit boards, paint stripping, surface cleaning, and many others.
TAE CO2 lasers (TAE stands for "Transversely Excited Atmospheric") are excited by high-voltage electrical discharges in a gas mixture at usually quite high pressure, and enable high-resolution machining with excellent edge quality. TAE lasers operate only in pulsed mode, because a gas discharge is difficult to stabilize at high pressure.
These lasers are widely used for marking products. Information like a logo, serial number or expiry date is created on different materials by selective removal of that material. Other applications include surface preparation (activation or cleaning) prior to paint application, plating, bonding, welding or casting in industrial environments. In addition, plastic materials can be selectively removed from a metal substrate, leaving the metal layer untouched. The main advantage of TAE pulsed CO2 lasers is the combination of short pulses of high energy with CO2-specific wavelengths (especially 10.6 µm). For many applications, TAE pulsed CO2 lasers offer a lower-cost alternative to excimer lasers.
The operating principle of an excimer laser is based on an electrically stimulated chemical reaction under high pressure, involving an excited "dimer" as the laser-active medium. In principle, a dimer consists of two identical atoms or molecules, but today noble gas halides are usually used, which is why the correct name for this type of laser is actually "exciplex laser".
Excimer lasers produce laser beams in the ultraviolet range and are usually operated in pulsed mode only. The laser light’s wavelength depends on the molecules produced during excitation – often fluorine and noble gas compounds such as ArF(193 nm), KrCl (222 nm), KrF (248 nm), XeCl (308 nm) or XeF (351 nm). Typical applications for excimer lasers are photolithography for semiconductor manufacturing, eye surgery such as the correction of myopia, or micro-material processing such as the creation of very fine inkjet printer nozzles.
Metal-gas lasers such as Helium-Cadmium (HeCd) lasers also generate mostly ultraviolet wavelengths (here around 325 nm) and, in comparison with diode lasers, feature not only a high beam quality but also particularly narrow oscillation bandwidths of less than 500 fm. This makes these lasers suitable for fluorescence-suppressed Raman spectroscopy, but also for many other scientific spectroscopy applications in the near-UV spectral range, as well as holography, research, materials science or medical technology. HeCd lasers consist of a vacuum-tight welded tube filled with Helium and Cadmium metal vapour, which continuously emits light in the blue and UV range.
Alternative Terms: CO2 Laser; Pulsed CO2 Laser; Excimer Laser; Helium-Cadmium Laser; HeCd Laser
