A carbon dioxide laser (CO2 laser) is a gas laser that uses CO2 gas as working substance. The discharge tube is usually made of glass or quartz material filled with CO2 gas and other auxiliary gases (mainly helium and nitrogen, usually with a small amount of hydrogen or helium); the electrode is generally a hollow cylinder made of nickel; One end is a gold-plated total reflection mirror and the other end is a partial mirror milled with tantalum or gallium arsenide. When a high voltage is applied to the electrode (generally DC or low frequency AC), a glow discharge is generated in the discharge tube, and a laser output is provided from the germanium mirror side, and the wavelength is 10.6μm in the mid-infrared band. Generally, in a good tube, 1m long discharge area can have a continuous 40~ 60 watts output.
SPT T Series CO2 Laser Tube
A co2 laser is a relatively important gas laser. This is because it has some outstanding advantages:
1. It utilizes the transition between the vibration-rotational energy levels of CO2 molecules, has a rich spectral line, and has dozens of spectral lines of laser output near 10μm. The high-pressure CO2 lasers discovered in recent years can even achieve a continuously tunable output from 9 to 10μm;
2. Its output band is just the atmospheric window (that is, the atmosphere has higher transparency to this wavelength); in addition, it also has the advantages like high quality laser beam, good coherence, narrow line width and stable. Therefore, it has many applications in the national economy and national defense, such as processing (welding, cutting, drilling, etc.), communication, radar, chemical analysis, laser-induced chemical reactions, surgery and so on.
3. It has relatively large power and high energy conversion efficiency. A typical closed-tube CO2 laser can have tens of watts of continuous output power, which far exceeds other gas lasers. And a lateral-flow, electrically excited CO2 laser tube can even have tens of thousands of watts. What’s more, the horizontal atmospheric CO2 laser has reached a high level of energy and power from the pulse output, which is comparable to solid-state lasers. The energy conversion efficiency of a CO2 laser can reach 30-40%, which is also superior to a general gas laser.
