Fiber Laser Pump Engine Designed for Next Generation Airborne Weapons Applications

QPC Lasers, Inc., a world leader in the development and commercialization of high brightness, high power semiconductor lasers for the consumer, industrial, defense, and medical markets, today announced it has delivered a high power laser to a U.S. Government Department of Defense customer to be used as a fiber laser pump engine for next generation airborne directed energy weapons applications.

The deliverable marks a key milestone in QPC’s ongoing development contract with this U.S. government customer that has awarded QPC $1.75 million in contracts since April of 2007 (see October 29, 2007 press release). The BrightLase® high power laser leverages QPC’s patented and proprietary semiconductor laser technologies that are designed to achieve a 10x reduction of cost, size, and weight compared to conventional laser technology.

“Today’s high-energy lasers are based on inefficient and bulky traditional technologies such as chemical lasers, but the future belongs to more efficient and compact diode pumped lasers. We believe that high power, compact and efficient chip-based diode lasers using QPC technologies are poised to become crucial elements in deployable high energy weapons,” said Dr. Jeffrey Ungar, co-founder and CEO of QPC. “With this delivery, we continue the refinement of our Generation III laser technologies for both military and commercial applications. These Generation III lasers enable a broad base of potential commercial applications and since their launch in September of 2007, have generated over $13 Million of new commercial contracts for defense, Laser TV, surgical and therapeutic applications,” Ungar concluded.

QPC lasers under development for the US Department of Defense leverage several of QPC’s unique capabilities, including:

• HPSELTM chip architectures, which enables QPC to place hundreds of high-brightness surface emitting lasers onto a single chip and which are designed to provide large cost and weight savings compared with conventional laser technologies.
• BrightLase® high power high brightness lasers which are designed to produce laser beams orders of magnitude brighter than conventional semiconductor lasers used in industrial and medical applications.
• BrightLock™ on-chip gratings which narrow the output spectrum of the laser while stabilizing the emission wavelength over a broad temperature range.
• Rugged military fiber coupled laser packages designed for reliable operation in demanding military environments applications.