On that note, I've posted a snippet from the link below. The...

On that note, I've posted a snippet from the link below. The full release is worth a read.

https://www.armysbir.army.mil/topics/bright-blue-semiconductor-laser-arrays-military-applications/

Bright Blue Semiconductor Laser Arrays for Military Applications

Objective

Develop compact chip-scale blue laser systems with high beam quality useful for machining and propagation. Advances based upon the coherent beam combining of diode lasers of high brightness are sought.

Description

Laser systems in the infrared have a long history of development for both DoD and commercial applications. Blue laser diode systems have been developed with improved performance over the past 2 decades; however, their brightness and power levels are much less than the best infrared systems.

Of particular interest is GaN based blue laser diodes which have superior brightness and power scaling potential over the current state-of-the-art. Blue light at wavelengths around 450 nm is of particular interest due to the increased absorption in many materials, particularly metals.

The laser energy can thus be transmitted into the material more quickly for more precise machining with less power. The Army would like to develop superior blue laser systems to assess applications in machining and directed energy where more compact and high performing systems may be possible.

Diode systems are of interest due to their compact size and GaN is known as a high thermal conductivity material so may be amenable to significant power scaling if coherent combining architectures can be developed. Finally, high beam quality and brightness are of interest for the applications and may require consideration of the laser diode architecture itself, and not just the beam combining architecture. However, the desired metrics for this topic allow for flexibility in the device approach....