High-volume, high-speed laser cutting:
Laser cutting and drilling is an often employed process in the manufacture of many products. The laser energy is focused on the workpiece, typically a flat metal part, to cut through or to make surface ablation.
Usually, a CNC type machine moves the workpiece in a 2D plane along a predetermined cut path, and a laser cutting head focuses a high intensity laser beam into one spot to generate a high heat focal point. Using a multi-spot beam splitter , the main beam can be subdivided into an arbitrary array of beams which then can be used at multiple points of a product or on multiple identical products at the same time. This can save costs of multiple cut heads, as a single head with adequate optics can be used to cut/ ablate several tracks simultaneously.
This high speed laser cutting method based on diffractive beam splitters can optimize production line processes and drive production costs down.
Fractional skin treatment:
In fractional skin rejuvenation treatments, laser energy is used to create micro-burns in the skin of the patient. These micro-burn , if correctly applied and with the correct spacing, induce natural rejuvenation processes of the skin. Diffractive beam splitter lenses are often employed in such laser skin treatments to generate an array of spots with precise separations, allowing the aesthetic doctor to cover larger areas of the patient’s skin with a single pulse, making treatment faster and more accurate.
Laser perforation:
Perforation is the technique of creating an array/series of holes or slits, usually applied in paper or plastics manufacturing. This is done so that products can be easily separated (e.g., checkbook, notepads, stamps etc.) or to provide easy-to-open packages (plastic packages), as well as for the creation of paper based filters . A multi spot diffractive beam splitter is often used to generate these patterns, increasing throughput compared to point-by-point scanning methods.
Depth sensing cameras:
A depth sensing camera, a pivotal sensor used in autonomous vehicles, robotics, object counting and many other fields, often uses a diffraction-based beam splitter to split a laser/LED light beam into project light patterns on an object, often called a “dot cloud”. An algorithm then can determine the object’s distance from the distortion of the light pattern. Usually, it uses An IR (Infra-Red) projector to emit the light pattern, and an IR camera to capture the image. 3D scanners also use a similar technique to create an image of the surface shape.
High speed laser ablation of solar panel passivation layers:
In dielectric back-passivated solar panels production, there is a need to remove the passivation layer at the back of the cell to enable contact and efficient charge extraction. This is often done by laser ablation along straight tracks, where the laser spot is scanned over the surface using a scanner and F-theta lens setup and opens a channel in the passivation. With increasing laser power, there is a potential to increase throughput, but scanners have limited processing speed. To enable higher throughput, the laser spot is split using a diffractive beam splitter into a line of spots with separations fitting the electrode spacing in the solar cell, then these spots are simultaneously scanned to create multiple ablation lines. This method increases throughput while maintaining precise channel separations, possible due to the absolute angular accuracy of diffractive optics.