Power Enhancement of Sealed-off CO2 Lasers by Incorporating Catalysts

Abstract

Various catalysts were tested and evaluated for enhancing the output power of sealed-off CO2 lasers by suppressing the CO2 dissociation in the discharge tube. They include (i) two kinds of distributed heterogenous catalysts, i. e. sputtered Pt layer and ion-exchanged Pt on MnO2 layer both on the internal surface of laser tube, (ii) homogeneous H2 catalyst generated from the equilibrium dissociation of Nb Hx and finally (iii) catalytic cathode made of La1-xSrx CO3 perovskite oxide.Among them, the La0.7 Sr0.3 CO3 cathode sintered at 1150°C acted satisfactorily producing the output power of 52W/m, which was almost equal to that of a gas flowing laser. The longest life of this laser was 4400h at the discharge current of 15mA. This excellent performance resulted from the simultaneous presence of metallic conductivity, catalytic activity, oxygen emissivity and low sputtering rate in the perovskite cathode material.