A laser diode is a laser where the active medium is a semiconductor similar to that found in a light-emitting diode. The most common and practical type of laser diode is formed from a p-n junction and powered by injected electrical current. These devices are sometimes referred to as injection laser diodes to distinguish them from optically pumped laser diodes, which are more easily produced in the laboratory.
Applications of laser diodes
Laser diodes are numerically the most common type of laser, with 2004 sales of approximately 733 million diode lasers (Steele 2005), as compared to 131,000 of other types of lasers (Kincade and Anderson 2005).
Laser diodes find wide use in telecommunication as easily modulated and easily coupled light sources for fiber optics communication. They are used in various measuring instruments, eg. rangefinders. Another common use is in barcode readers. Visible lasers, typically red but recently also green, are common as laser pointers. Both low and high-power diodes are used extensively in the printing industry both as light sources for scanning (input) of images and for very high-speed and high-resolution printing plate (output) manufacturing. Infrared and red laser diodes are common in CD players, CD-ROMs and DVD technology. Blue-violet lasers will find their use in upcoming HD-DVD and Blu-Ray technology. High-power laser diodes are used in industrial applications such as heat treating, cladding, seam welding and for pumping other lasers, such as diode pumped solid state lasers. The use of diode lasers for high-speed, low-cost, combustion spectroscopy is being explored.
In general, applications of laser diodes can be categorized in various ways. Most applications of diode lasers can be served by larger solid state lasers or optical parametric oscillators but it is the ability to mass-produce diode lasers at low cost that makes them essential for mass-market applications. Diode lasers have application to virtually every field of endeavor that attracts wide attention today. Since light has many different properties (power, wavelength & spectral quality, beam quality, polarization, etc.) it is interesting to classify applications by these basic properties.
Many applications of diode lasers primarily make use of the "directed energy" property of an optical beam. In this category one might include the laser printers, bar-code readers, image scanning, illuminators, designators, optical data recording, combustion ignition, laser surgery, industrial sorting, industrial machining, and directed energy weaponry. Some of these applications are emerging whereas many are familiar to the wider society.
Applications which may today or in the future make use of the "coherent" properties of diode-laser-generated light include interferometric distance measurement, holography, coherent communications, and coherent control of chemical reactions.
Applications which may make use of "narrow spectral" properties of diode lasers include telecommunications, infra-red countermeasures, spectroscopic sensing, generation of radio-frequency or terahertz waves, atomic clock state preparation, quantum key cryptography, frequency doubling and conversion, water purification (in the UV), and photodynamic therapy (where a particular wavelength of light would cause a substance such as porphyrin to become chemically active as an anti-cancer agent only where the tissue is illuminated by light).
Applications where the ability to "generate ultra-short pulses of light" by the technique known as "mode-locking" include clock distribution for high-performance integrated circuits, high-peak-power sources for laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy sensing, arbitrary waveform generation for radio-frequency waves, photonic sampling for analog-to-digital conversion, and optical code-division-multiple-access systems for secure communication.
Laser diodes find wide use in telecommunication as easily modulated and easily coupled light sources for fiber optics communication. They are used in various measuring instruments, eg. rangefinders. Another common use is in barcode readers. Visible lasers, typically red but recently also green, are common as laser pointers. Both low and high-power diodes are used extensively in the printing industry both as light sources for scanning (input) of images and for very high-speed and high-resolution printing plate (output) manufacturing. Infrared and red laser diodes are common in CD players, CD-ROMs and DVD technology. Blue-violet lasers will find their use in upcoming HD-DVD and Blu-Ray technology. High-power laser diodes are used in industrial applications such as heat treating, cladding, seam welding and for pumping other lasers, such as diode pumped solid state lasers. The use of diode lasers for high-speed, low-cost, combustion spectroscopy is being explored.
In general, applications of laser diodes can be categorized in various ways. Most applications of diode lasers can be served by larger solid state lasers or optical parametric oscillators but it is the ability to mass-produce diode lasers at low cost that makes them essential for mass-market applications. Diode lasers have application to virtually every field of endeavor that attracts wide attention today. Since light has many different properties (power, wavelength & spectral quality, beam quality, polarization, etc.) it is interesting to classify applications by these basic properties.
Many applications of diode lasers primarily make use of the "directed energy" property of an optical beam. In this category one might include the laser printers, bar-code readers, image scanning, illuminators, designators, optical data recording, combustion ignition, laser surgery, industrial sorting, industrial machining, and directed energy weaponry. Some of these applications are emerging whereas many are familiar to the wider society.
Applications which may today or in the future make use of the "coherent" properties of diode-laser-generated light include interferometric distance measurement, holography, coherent communications, and coherent control of chemical reactions.
Applications which may make use of "narrow spectral" properties of diode lasers include telecommunications, infra-red countermeasures, spectroscopic sensing, generation of radio-frequency or terahertz waves, atomic clock state preparation, quantum key cryptography, frequency doubling and conversion, water purification (in the UV), and photodynamic therapy (where a particular wavelength of light would cause a substance such as porphyrin to become chemically active as an anti-cancer agent only where the tissue is illuminated by light).
Applications where the ability to "generate ultra-short pulses of light" by the technique known as "mode-locking" include clock distribution for high-performance integrated circuits, high-peak-power sources for laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy sensing, arbitrary waveform generation for radio-frequency waves, photonic sampling for analog-to-digital conversion, and optical code-division-multiple-access systems for secure communication.
From Wikipedia
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