What are the main applications of femtosecond lasers?
Since the laser was invented, it has been widely used in different fields such as processing, manufacturing, testing, and medical treatment with its advantages of monochromaticity, good directionality, and energy concentration. In recent years, scientists have discovered a more peculiar laser-femtosecond laser. It is reported that the femtosecond laser is the shortest pulse technology that humans can currently obtain under laboratory conditions. Femtosecond lasers emit more power in an instant than the total power of electricity generation in the world. Scientists predict that femtosecond lasers will play an important role in the field of new energy in the next century.
Ultra-fast ultra-strong laser mainly uses femtosecond laser as the core of research and application. As a unique scientific research tool and method, the application of femtosecond laser can be roughly summarized into three main aspects, that is, femtosecond laser is in ultrafast Application in the field, application in the super field and application in ultra-fine precision machining.
(1) Ultrafast phenomenon refers to a physical, chemical or biological process that changes rapidly in the microscopic system of matter. Femtosecond lasers play a role in rapid process diagnosis in the field of ultrafast phenomena research. Femtosecond laser is like a very fine clock and a super-high-speed "camera", which can analyze and record some rapid processes in nature, especially at the atomic and molecular level. In this field, the femtosecond laser has opened a new door for us, allowing us to see a more subtle natural world.
(2) The application of femtosecond lasers in the super-strong field (also known as strong field physics) is due to the fact that the peak power and light intensity of femtosecond pulses with certain energy can be very high. The electromagnetic field corresponding to such a strong light will be much larger than the Coulomb field in the atom, so that all the electrons in the atom are easily stripped out. Therefore, the femtosecond laser is an important tool for studying high-order nonlinear and multiphoton processes in atomic and molecular systems. The energy density corresponding to the femtosecond laser can only exist in a nuclear explosion. Femtosecond intense light can be used to generate coherent X-rays and other extremely short-wavelength light, which can be used for controlled nuclear fusion research.
(3) With the increasing scale of integrated circuits, electronic components are becoming smaller and smaller in size. This demand provides room for ultra-fine processing technology. The use of femtosecond lasers for ultra-fine processing is another important application research field of femtosecond laser technology besides the use of femtosecond lasers for ultrafast phenomenon research and super-strong phenomenon research. This application has gradually developed in response to market demand in recent years, and has made a lot of important progress.
Different from femtosecond superfast and femtosecond super research, femtosecond laser ultrafine processing is closely related to advanced manufacturing technology, which can play a more direct role in promoting the development of certain key industrial production technologies. Femtosecond laser ultrafine processing is an extremely eye-catching frontier research direction in the laser and optoelectronic industries in the world today. With the continuous development of femtosecond laser technology and the continuous expansion of application fields, femtosecond lasers are bound to have more applications.