Abstract

In our work, the design and performance of a new kind TEA CO2 laser is reported. It was preionized by ultraviolet (UV) from surface corona discharge. A BN ceramic structure was employed as an assembly of resonators. The output energy of 143 mJ, the pulse duration of 50 ns, the transverse mode of TEM00, the repetition-rate of 50 Hz, the divergence of only 4 mrad was obtained. Comparing with UV bare-spark- preionized (BSP) TEA CO2 lasers, it was found that (1) the uniform of the main electrode discharge was improved, (2) the repetition-rate was improved from 30 Hz to 50 Hz, (3) the input energy was four times lower than that of BSP TEA CO2 laser under the same output energy, (4) the lifetime reached 106 pulse, (5) the stability of resonator was improved, the output energy eliminated only 14% after 3.5 hours operation. The performance was improved because the intrinsic efficiency of surface corona preionization was four times higher than that of BSP one, the corona discharge was very uniform and photodissociation processes involved in BSP were avoided. The extremely low thermal-expansion of BN minimized the misalignment, so the high reliability can be obtained.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

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