The increasing use of short – and ultrashort pulsed lasers in industrial applications leads to a demand for high power industrial-grade lasers covering a large range of pulsed laser parameters. We will present a comprehensive overview of our latest pulsed laser results based on different laser building blocks such as seed lasers, fiber amplifiers, rod and slab amplifiers, thin disk amplifiers and combinations thereof. Along with the technical insights we will give an outlook on the next development steps to further scale these parameters.

Driving nonlinear processes in scientific and upcoming industrial applications has been a topic with increasing interest and activities in the last years. Examples are the production of very short wavelengths via direct driven plasma light-sources (incoherent) or high-harmonic generation (coherent), optical parametric chirped pulse amplification to different wavelengths and shorter pulses and direct pulse shortening via self-phase modulation and subsequent compression down to the few-cycle pulse duration regime. We report on multi100W ultrafast laser sources with 1ps pulse durations and below and <10mJ pulse energies based on the InnoSlab laser-concept. Achieved beam qualities are M2<1.2 at average power stabilities in the 0.1% regime. Measured pulse stabilities are around 1% (rms) and pulse intensity contrasts well exceed 50dB for preceding or following pulses. These stability values together with the high average pulse power are very well suited for use as drivers of nonlinear optical processes. We show that these sources can be integrated into very compact housings with full computer control which additionally eases the practical use for further processing of the radiation.

Industrial ultrafast lasers such as TRUMPF's TruMicro Series are indispensable tools in many precision machining processes. Large 24/7 applications range from machining of sapphire or glass to ceramics, polymers, and metals in industries from the automotive sector to consumer electronics. In typical installations such pico- and femtosecond lasers currently operate at average power levels up to 150 W, often with nonlinear frequency conversion to the visible or UV. Based on the advanced amplifier technology pioneered by AMPHOS we introduce our new hybrid fiber–InnoSlab amplifier generation TruMicro Series 6000, capable of producing the highest average power at utmost flexibility and reliability.

Ultrafast lasers are the ideal tool for a wide range of applications in materials processing. Especially the modification of surfaces of any kind of material like glass, metal and plastics will have huge impact on many high-tech products. Surface structuring is used to generate specific surface properties and as the processes are different and a wide variety of scanning solutions form Galvo with diffractive elements up to polygonscanners are used to distribute the energy onto the surface, the ideal laser source allows to address a broad parameter range. InnoSlab amplification technology is the ideal candidate for that as it is shown in this paper.

The InnoSlab concept was developed at Fraunhofer ILT more than 15 years ago using Nd-based laser crystals. InnoSlab is a highly efficient amplification setup that allows for an extremely broad range of laser parameters due to its inherently simple setup. Today InnoSlab using Yb-based laser crystals is the leading amplifier technology for achieving highest output power in the ultrashort pulse regime.

A flexible ultrafast laser amplifier system based on Ytterbium Innoslab technology with an average power exceeding 200W is presented. The pulse duration of the system can be continuously tuned between 500fs and 6ps, limited only by the amplification bandwidth of Yb:YAG and the stretcher of the seed source. The repetition rate can be varied from 26.6MHz down to 1MHz. For the ps-regime more than 200μJ and for the fs-regime more than 50μJ are demonstrated without the need of temporal compression of the high power beam after the amplifier. Spectral bandwidth is close to the transform limit of the shortest measured pulses. Beam quality is measured to be near the diffraction limit (M2<1.3).

A miniaturized solid state laser for marking applications has been developed featuring novel assembly strategies to reduce size, cost and assembly effort. Design and setup have been laid out with future automation of the assembly in mind. Using a high precision robot the optical components composing the laser system are directly placed on a planar substrate providing accurate positioning and alignment within a few microns. No adjustable mounts for mirrors and lenses are necessary, greatly simplifying the setup. Consisting of either a ND:YAG or a Nd:YVO4 crystal pumped with a fiber coupled diode laser, a q-switch for pulse generation and a beam expander the entire assembly is confined in a 100ml space and delivers 4 W of continuous output power at 1.064 μm with an efficiency greater than 40%. Pulse lengths of 10-20 ns and repetition rates of up to 150 kHz have been obtained with an acousto-optic modulator. In addition, a custom designed electro-optic modulator with integrated high voltage switch has been realized. A supply unit for the entire system, including scanner and water cooling, is integrated in a 19" industrial chassis and can be operated via a graphical user interface on a standard personal computer.