BMBF Funding Supports The Competitiveness Of German Laser Companies

The joint research project "PrOpSys" (production technology of optical systems for high power diode lasers), funded by the German federal ministry of education and research (BMBF) reports an exceedingly successful intermediate result: With the help of a novel assembling system, fully automated assembly and adjustment of a high power diode laser were demonstrated for the very first time. This opens up the way to a significant decrease of manufacturing costs in the highly competitive high power diode laser market.

Due to the fact that high power diode lasers are used as light source in many other industries like automotive industry, plant machinery and engineering or telecommunication, these lasers play a pivotal role in the fast-growing market of optoelectronic products. Up to now, these high power diode lasers still need to be manually assembled in complex adjustment and assembly steps. "To safeguard our competitive position, we have to automate our processes", mentioned project coordinator Dr. Jens Meinschien during the presentation. "With the completion of the demonstrator system, we did a significant step to reach the upcoming volume markets".

For automatic adjustment, firstly the laser diode bar is activated. Thereupon, the collimator lens is located in front of the diode laser with the help of a micrometer exact positioning system. This is done so that the connected metrology can collect and evaluate the laser radiation. The innovation of this development lies in the fact that several positions of the collimator lens can be tested in front of the laser diode bar. This test comes about by means of especially developed methods of digital image processing for analysis of the intensity distribution of the laser radiation. As result of this image analysis, the optimized position for the lens is defined by the help of appropriate alignment algorithms. Finally, the lens is fixed in an exact position in front of the laser diode bar.

The introduced system has been assembled by ficonTEC and currently starts running at the Fraunhofer IZM. The institute serves as technology test bed for development of further optimized adjustment and assembling processes for mass-production suited manufacturing of optoelectronic products. The joint research project "PrOpSys" is funded by the German federal ministry of education and research within the programme "Optical Technologies" with €1.9M.

About PrOpSys:
The joint research project "PrOpSys" is aimed at developing the technical bases for mass-production suited designs and the associated, fully automatic manufacturing technology for micro optical systems and high power diode laser respectively. Using interdisciplinary research of companies and research institutes, this complex challenge could have been solved:

• Project coordinator is LIMO Lissotschenko Mikrooptik GmbH (Dortmund). LIMO deals with all aspects of diode laser design and investigates associated manufacturing steps.
• FiconTEC Service GmbH (Bremen) focuses on the automation itself and machine concepts.
• Artifex Engineering (Emden) manufactures optoelectronic components for monitoring and controlling diode lasers.
• The main focus of the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT (Aachen,) is on alignment algorithms and assembly techniques.
• The Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM (Berlin) concentrates on the mounting technology and reliability and tolerance analysis.

SOURCE: LIMO Lissotschenko Mikrooptik GmbH