Patent highlights

27 Aug 2003

The pick of this week's patent applications including a semiconductor laser with a tilted cavity design.

•  Title: Tilted cavity semiconductor laser (TCSL) and method of making same
Applicant: Vitaly Shchukin and Nikolai Ledentsov, Germany
International Application Number: WO 03/069737
A semiconductor laser that has the ability to act as both a surface-emitting and an edge-emitting device is being patented by two inventors in Berlin, Germany. According to the authors of application WO 03/069737, the so-called tilted cavity laser requires far fewer layers to create the laser’s bottom and top interference reflectors. They also say that a wavelength stabilized version has been realized.

•  Title: High repetition rate excimer laser system
Applicant: Corning Incorporated, US
International Application Number: WO 03/069739
A design for an argon fluoride excimer laser that operates at a repetition rate of 3-4 kHz is being patented by Corning, the US maker of glass products and optical fiber. Corning says that the laser design emits light at 193 nm and makes use of optical windows made from magnesium fluoride.

•  Title: Method for producing hologram by pico-second laser
Applicant: Japan Science and Technology Corporation, Japan
International application number: WO 03/069416
By making holograms with picosecond rather than femtosecond light pulses, scientists in Japan believe that they can avoid distortion problems that occur due to optical nonlinear effects. The authors say that they make the hologram by splitting a pulsed beam from a solid-state picosecond laser into two paths and creating an interference pattern in or on a suitable material. The laser pulses must have a power of not less than 10 microJ each and be between 900 fs and 100 ps in duration.

Author
Oliver Graydon is editor of Optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.