Jenoptik has celebrated 15 years of developing, producing and marketing high-power diode lasers.
Over this timescale, Jenoptik has gone from a provider of goods for laser research to offering large-scale products, and all the while has puched for the industrial use of this efficient type of laser.
Jenoptik took over all areas of the high-power diode laser business from Heimann Optoelectronics of Wiesbaden, Germany on 1 April 1993 resulting in the founding of Jenoptik Laserdiode GmbH.
After two years, the company, which then had 18 employees, moved its headquarters from Wiesbaden to Jena to take on the challenge of being the first German business to mass produce high-power diode lasers specifically for industrial usage. Today, the Diode Laser business unit of the Lasers & Material Processing division of Jenoptik has 130 employees and 15 times the sales volume of 10 years ago.
A crucial step in achieving this began in 1995 through the intensive technological partnership with the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik in Berlin-Adlershof, developers of the high quality semiconductor material needed for high-power diode lasers. Through this cooperation, Jenoptik Diode Lab was founded in 2002 in Berlin-Adlershof to produce diode laser bars and currently has 24 workers.
The high-power diode lasers produced by Jenoptik are used in a range of ways – from pumping solid-state and fibre lasers to welding, cutting and soldering metal as well as for plastic welding and even as a direct beam source for medical technology.
The optimising of the semiconductor material as well as of the mounting and conjoining techniques made it possible to raise the optical power output from just a few watts to 120 W in continuous wave mode and 300W in quasi continuous wave mode with the highest life expectancy.
Jenoptik celebrated 15 years of diode laser activity on 18 April, with an anniversary celebration and an in-house trade show. An exhibition accompanied comprehensive lectures on subjects centred on the diode laser in the headquarters of Jenoptik Laserdiode in Jena-Göschwitz.
