High Energy Picosecond Lasers: Ready for Prime Time

Abstract

High‐pulse energy picosecond laser systems provide industrial‐level reliability combined with the performance features required for many ultrafast material processing applications. Current diodepumped solid‐state systems provide pulse energies into the 100's of microjoules at 1064 nm wavelength and pulse widths of approximately 10 picoseconds, which allows effective “cold” ablation of most materials with high efficiency. Average power of these systems is scalable up to 50 W and will further increase into the multi‐100 W range, allowing for very high speed picosecond micromachining.This article first reviews the basics of picosecond micromachining, gives a short perspective on the development of these lasers over the last few decades, then summarizes their current performance. We review some of the applications that are enabled with these lasers, before we discuss future developments in this rapidly changing field.