To produce the flat panels used in mobile phones, displays, solar cells, and other high-end products, lasers often have to perform cuts of 500 mm per second with the highest precision. The flexibility and durability of the component depend on this.
Shaped single-mode laser beams with a long focus in the z-axis can deliver such results; however, to date these results have been very difficult to produce. This will change with the DeepCleave module from Holo/OR. This lens system, which has an integrated diffractive optical element, bundles a single-mode laser beam in such a way that it has a long focal line with a uniform intensity distribution in the beam direction (z-axis) across a length of up to 2 mm. In this range, the beam does not have its usual waist-like shape but rather a constant diameter of 1.8 µm.
The overall system corresponds to a lens with a numerical aperture of 0.35. It can be used immediately without additional lenses or expensive optics. The prerequisite for this is an input beam with a precisely defined size and a small M².