Polygon Scanner Research Articles

Simple retinal imaging system using a MEMS scanning mirror

We have fabricated a simple and compact scanning laser optical system using microelectromechanical system (MEMS) scanner that can be incorporated into portable health monitoring devices. The two-dimensional (2-D) MEMS scanner used in this system is much smaller and light in weight compared to galvanometer scanners and polygon scanners used in the commercially available ophthalmic devices. MEMS scanners have many advantages and also limitations compared to galvanometer and polygon scanners. An easy to use and compact device is more useful for rapid alignment for measurement and data acquisition. Sensitivity of the system was quantified by measuring signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for both high and low reflectivity materials. SNR was 10 for the high reflectance materials and about 4 for low reflectance materials, which is sufficient for biological imaging. Distortion generated using large scanning angle of 2-D MEMS scanner was corrected in real time by custom made LabVIEW program. Ocular safety is important to consider when using a laser for ophthalmic devices. We calculated the maximum permissible beam power for thermal damage and photochemical damage considering the specification of our system such as visual angle and wavelength of the laser beam. The measured laser intensity in the front of model eye was 6 μW, which is much smaller than the maximum permissible beam power recommended by the American National Standards Institute.

High contrast imaging and flexible photomanipulation for quantitative in vivo multiphoton imaging with polygon scanning microscope

In this study, we introduce two key improvements that overcome limitations of existing polygon scanning microscopes while maintaining high spatial and temporal imaging resolution over large field of view (FOV). First, we proposed a simple and straightforward means to control the scanning angle of the polygon mirror to carry out photomanipulation without resorting to high speed optical modulators. Second, we devised a flexible data sampling method directly leading to higher image contrast by over 2-fold and digital images with 100 megapixels (10 240 × 10 240) per frame at 0.25 Hz. This generates sub-diffraction limited pixels (60 nm per pixels over the FOV of 512 μm) which increases the degrees of freedom to extract signals computationally. The unique combined optical and digital control recorded fine fluorescence recovery after localized photobleaching (r ~10 μm) within fluorescent giant unilamellar vesicles and micro-vascular dynamics after laser-induced injury during thrombus formation in vivo. These new improvements expand the quantitative biological-imaging capacity of any polygon scanning microscope system.

Polygon scanning system for high-power, high-speed microstructuring

A key requirement in automotive industry is reducing weight through innovative lightweight construction concepts. For multi-material construction the manufacture of plastic-metal hybrids poses a particular challenge due to the chemical and physical dissimilarity. At Fraunhofer ILT, a process chain has been developed for connecting thermoplastics with metals. First, the metal surface is microstructured with laser radiation to create undercut structures for the interlocking of polymer and metal, which are connected afterwards via a thermal joining process. Although laser-microstructuring is already a fast process, for automotive cycle times higher processing speeds are required. In this contribution a new polygon-based scanning system is combined with a 2 kW single mode fiber laser for a continuous high-speed microstructuring process of metals as pretreatment for local UD-tape-reinforcements. The scanner setup and first microstructuring results on different metals are presented.

Methods to improve the performance of the swept source at 10 μm based on a polygon scanner

In this work, we investigate the methods to improve the performance of the swept source at 1.0 μm based on a polygon scanner, including in-cavity parameters and booster structures out of the cavity. The three in-cavity parameters are the cavity length, the rotating speed of the polygon scanner, and the in-cavity energy. With the decrease of cavity length, the spectrum bandwidth becomes wider and the duty cycle becomes higher. With the increase of the rotating speed of the polygon, the spectrum bandwidth becomes narrower, and the duty cycle becomes lower but the repetition rate becomes higher. With more energy in-cavity, the spectrum bandwidth becomes wider and the duty cycle becomes higher. The booster structures include the buffered structure, secondary amplifier, and dual-semiconductor optical amplifier configuration, which are used to increase the sweep frequency to 86 kHz, the output power to 18 mW, and the tuning bandwidth to 131 nm, respectively.

Real-time online monitoring of nanosecond pulsed laser scribing process utilizing spectrometer

This study proposes a novel configuration and algorithm to develop real-time online monitoring of an ultrafast scribing process utilizing a spectrometer. The target process was the ultrafast low energy scribing process performed by using a nanosecond laser. A new configuration in which the spectrometer probe incorporated into the scanner head unit and received the reflection light of microprocessing via a special monitoring adapter has been developed. The scan head adapter enables the scan head-based observation of a galvanometer and polygon scan head's working field. Typical applications include process monitoring or determination of a work piece's orientation during laser processing.

Concrete CT Image Quick Three-Dimensional Reconstruction Research

The research of the mechanical properties of concrete, a kind of heterogeneous composite material, was previously established on basis of the mathematical model of random aggregate, which is used to study and analyze the mesoscopic damage mechanism of concrete. Although the shape and distribution of aggregate in the model built by this method are closer to the real structure of concrete, there is still a big difference between them and the real concrete specimen. In order to solve the problem of large amount of redundant computation in the CT reconstruction of full size cube space, a fast reconstruction method based on ray-casting algorithm is proposed. First, a method integrating the new bounding box technology with the plane intersection algorithm clusters were adopted to cut the body data and ray-casting effectively, and then, the polygon scanning and conversion was utilized to reduce the number of cast rays, finally, the adaptive sampling method was used to avoid repeatedly sampling same voxel so that the reconstruction efficiency of whole algorithm and the feasibility of numerical calculation can be enhanced. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can greatly improve the 3D rendering speed of concrete CT without affecting the image quality. It provides a more effective and reliable approach for correctly analyzing the mesoscopic damage mechanism and mechanical characteristics of concrete.

High-throughput machining using a high-average power ultrashort pulse laser and high-speed polygon scanner

High-throughput ultrashort pulse laser machining is investigated on various industrial grade metals (aluminum, copper, and stainless steel) and Al2O3 ceramic at unprecedented processing speeds. This is achieved by using a high-average power picosecond laser in conjunction with a unique, in-house developed polygon mirror-based biaxial scanning system. Therefore, different concepts of polygon scanners are engineered and tested to find the best architecture for high-speed and precision laser beam scanning. In order to identify the optimum conditions for efficient processing when using high-average laser powers, the depths of cavities made in the samples by varying the processing parameter settings are analyzed and, from the results obtained, the characteristic removal values are specified. For overlapping pulses of optimum fluence, the removal rate is as high as 27.8 mm3/min for aluminum, 21.4 mm3/min for copper, 15.3 mm3/min for stainless steel, and 129.1 mm3/min for Al2O3, when a laser beam of 187 W average laser powers irradiates. On stainless steel, it is demonstrated that the removal rate increases to 23.3 mm3/min when the laser beam is very fast moving. This is thanks to the low pulse overlap as achieved with 800 m/s beam deflection speed; thus, laser beam shielding can be avoided even when irradiating high-repetitive 20-MHz pulses.

Metal Optics — New Chances for Laser Focusing Mirrors

AbstractAll reflective laser focusing heads have been in use for industrial high‐power laser machining systems for more than thirty years now. Originally inevitable for multi‐kilowatt “macro” lasers, now better metal mirror machining technologies open the field for metal optics to mid‐power and even to low‐power applications. Especially the advantage of cost effective flexible manufacturing of aspherical and free form surfaces even in lowest quantities gives the optical engineers the versatility to manufacture laser focusing systems for interesting new applications: Bessel beams will go beyond the diffraction limit, polygon scanners with smallest focus spots will deliver high power densities, e.g. for dicing, extremely compact focusing for 3D metal printing or remote welding is realized with a few mirrors only. Complete “focusing‐boxes” or just single mirrors as well as matched mirror sets are available and help laser machine builders and system integrators to realize never‐seen‐before products.

Extending ultra-short pulse laser texturing over large area

Surface texturing by Ultra-Short Pulses Laser (UPL) for industrial applications passes through the use of both fast beam scanning systems and high repetition rate, high average power P, UPL. Nevertheless unwanted thermal effects are expected when P exceeds some tens of W. An interesting strategy for a reliable heat management would consists in texturing with a low fluence values (slightly higher than the ablation threshold) and utilising a Polygon Scanner Heads delivering laser pulses with unrepeated speed.Here we show for the first time that with relatively low fluence it is possible over stainless steel, to obtain surface texturing by utilising a 2MHz femtosecond laser jointly with a polygonal scanner head in a relatively low fluence regime (0.11Jcm−2). Different surface textures (Ripples, micro grooves and spikes) can be obtained varying the scan speed from 90ms−1 to 25ms−1. In particular, spikes formation process has been shown and optimised at 25ms−1 and a full morphology characterization by SEM has been carried out. Reflectance measurements with integrating sphere are presented to compare reference surface with high scan rate textures. In the best case we show a black surface with reflectance value<5%.

An omnidirectional 3D sensor with line laser scanning

An active omnidirectional vision owns the advantages of the wide field of view (FOV) imaging, resulting in an entire 3D environment scene, which is promising in the field of robot navigation. However, the existing omnidirectional vision sensors based on line laser can measure points only located on the optical plane of the line laser beam, resulting in the low-resolution reconstruction. Whereas, to improve resolution, some other omnidirectional vision sensors with the capability of projecting 2D encode pattern from projector and curved mirror. However, the astigmatism property of curve mirror causes the low-accuracy reconstruction. To solve the above problems, a rotating polygon scanning mirror is used to scan the object in the vertical direction so that an entire profile of the observed scene can be obtained at high accuracy, without of astigmatism phenomenon. Then, the proposed method is calibrated by a conventional 2D checkerboard plate. The experimental results show that the measurement error of the 3D omnidirectional sensor is approximately 1mm. Moreover, the reconstruction of objects with different shapes based on the developed sensor is also verified.

Pilot-scale synthesis of metal nanoparticles by high-speed pulsed laser ablation in liquids

The synthesis of catalysis-relevant nanoparticles such as platinum and gold is demonstrated with productivities of 4 g h−1 for pulsed laser ablation in liquids (PLAL). The major drawback of low productivity of PLAL is overcome by utilizing a novel ultrafast high-repetition rate laser system combined with a polygon scanner that reaches scanning speeds up to 500 m s−1. This high scanning speed is exploited to spatially bypass the laser-induced cavitation bubbles at MHz-repetition rates resulting in an increase of the applicable, ablation-effective, repetition rate for PLAL by two orders of magnitude. The particle size, morphology and oxidation state of fully automated synthesized colloids are analyzed while the ablation mechanisms are studied for different laser fluences, repetition rates, interpulse distances, ablation times, volumetric flow rates and focus positions. It is found that at high scanning speeds and high repetition rate PLAL the ablation process is stable in crystallite size and decoupled from shielding and liquid effects that conventionally occur during low-speed PLAL.

Femtosecond Lasers over 100 Watts

AbstractThe concept of the world's first industrial femtosecond laser with high average power (&gt; 100 W), delivering 400 fs pulses that is presented here is flexible in pulse repetition rate and offers high pulse energy up to 300 μJ. The laser is designed for easy synchronization to polygon scanners and with optional burst mode. This laser enables higher throughput and productivity, coupled with superior quality processing. The availability of high power femtosecond lasers paves the way for further penetration of ultrafast laser sources into emerging industrial high quality laser processing.

Continuous multigram nanoparticle synthesis by high-power, high-repetition-rate ultrafast laser ablation in liquids.

Utilizing a novel laser system consisting of a 500 W, 10 MHz, 3 ps laser source which is fully synchronized with a polygon scanner reaching scanning speeds up to 500 m/s, we explore the possibilities to increase the productivity of nanoparticle synthesis by laser ablation in liquids. By exploiting the high scanning speed, laser-induced cavitation bubbles are spatially bypassed at high repetition rates and continuous multigram ablation rates up to 4 g/h are demonstrated for platinum, gold, silver, aluminum, copper, and titanium. Furthermore, the applicable, ablation-effective repetition rate is increased by two orders of magnitude. The ultrafast ablation mechanisms are investigated for different laser fluences, repetition rates, interpulse distances, and ablation times, while the resulting trends are successfully described by validating a model developed for ultrafast laser ablation in air to hold in liquids as well.

Monostatic all-fiber scanning LADAR system.

A compact scanning LADAR system based on a fiber-coupled, monostatic configuration which transmits (TX) and receives (RX) through the same aperture has been developed. A small piezo-electric stripe actuator was used to resonantly vibrate a fiber cantilever tip and scan the transmitted near-single-mode optical beam and the cladding mode receiving aperture. When compared to conventional bi-static systems with polygon, galvo, or Risley-prism beam scanners, the described system offers several advantages: the inherent alignment of the receiver field-of-view (FOV) relative to the TX beam angle, small size and weight, and power efficiency. Optical alignment of the system was maintained at all ranges since there is no parallax between the TX beam and the receiver FOV. A position-sensing detector (PSD) was used to sense the instantaneous fiber tip position. The Si PSD operated in a two-photon absorption mode to detect the transmitted 1.5 μm pulses. The prototype system collected 50,000 points per second with a 6° full scan angle and a 27 mm clear aperture/40 mm focal length TX/RX lens, had a range precision of 4.7 mm, and was operated at a maximum range of 26 m.

Time resolved three-dimensional flamebase imaging of a lifted jet flame by laser scanning

The measurement of flame surface evolution in both space and time is necessary for the advancement of knowledge concerning the physical processes contributing to lifted jet flame stabilisation. Previous studies either reproduce the flame front accurately in three-dimensional space or in time. In this study a measurement system capable of both is presented. Based on the Mie-scattering of oil droplets added to the jet flow, the system reconstructs the volumetric surface at the base of a lifted jet flame from a series of two-dimensional slices. The slices are created using a pulsed high-speed laser and a polygonal laser scanner unit which serves to sweep the laser beam through the measurement volume. A single high-speed camera is used for recording the subsequent measurement slices. The achieved temporal and spatial resolution as well as the accuracy and precision of the sheet placement are discussed in respect to the flames’ scales. The first results of the reconstruction of the lifted jet flame at its stabilisation point show the potential of such measurements to avoid the ambiguities in interpreting conventional 2D-data.

Broadband and high-speed swept external-cavity laser using a quantum-dot superluminescent diode as gain device**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61274072) and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2013AA014201).

A wide wavelength tuning range swept external-cavity laser using an InAs/GaAs quantum-dot superluminescent diode as a gain device is demonstrated. The tunable filter consists of a polygon scanner and a grating in Littrow telescope-less configuration. The swept laser generates greater than 54-mW peak output power and up to 33-kHz sweep rate with a sweep range of 150 nm centered at 1155 nm. The effects of injection current and sweep rate on the sweep performance of the swept laser are studied.

Comprehensive Simulation and Acceleration of the Foil-metallization Laser Process

The upgrade of state of the art p-type silicon solar cell production lines to passivated rear side technology (PERC) will be one of the major trends in the next years and new production processes for further cost reduction will continuously gain relevance. In 2007, we have introduced the laser based foil metallization technology “FolMet”: the rear electrode of p-type PERC devices as well as the local contact is fabricated by attaching conventional aluminum foil during the so-called laser fired contact process to the silicon wafer. This process features improved internal optical properties, a huge cost saving potential and a simplified cell production process. In this publication we focus on the acceleration of the laser process, which is together with module assembly issues a remaining challenge towards industrialization. We carried out comprehensive simulations, to better understand the correlation between different laser parameters on melting- and evaporation depth of the 8 μm thin aluminum foil. We determined lower limits for crucial laser pulse parameters to successfully attach the foil onto the substrate and validated these parameters experimentally. According to these results, we set up a system based on a pulsed high power laser featuring repetition rates Frep ≤ 2 MHz with an unique ultrafast polygon scanning system, allowing for scan-speeds vscan ≤ 1000 m/s. Thereby, we demonstrate processing times tpro < 0.8 s for industrial wafer, which corresponds to a reduction in laser process time by the factor of 20 compared to state of the art laser scanning technology.

Process optimization in high-average-power ultrashort pulse laser microfabrication: how laser process parameters influence efficiency, throughput and quality

In this paper, laser processing of technical grade stainless steel and copper using high-average-power ultrashort pulse lasers is studied in order to gain deeper insight into material removal for microfabrication. A high-pulse repetition frequency picosecond and femtosecond laser is used in conjunction with high-performance galvanometer scanners and an in-house developed two-axis polygon scanner system. By varying the processing parameters such as wavelength, pulse length, fluence and repetition rate, cavities of standardized geometry are fabricated and analyzed. From the depths of the cavities produced, the ablation rate and removal efficiency are estimated. In addition, the quality of the cavities is evaluated by means of scanning electron microscope micrographs or rather surface roughness measurements. From the results obtained, the influence of the machining parameters on material removal and machining quality is discussed. In addition, it is shown that both material removal rate and quality increase by using femtosecond compared to picosecond laser pulses. On stainless steel, a maximum throughput of 6.81 mm3/min is achieved with 32 W femtosecond laser powers; if using 187 W picosecond laser powers, the maximum is 15.04 mm3/min, respectively. On copper, the maximum throughputs are 6.1 mm3/min and 21.4 mm3/min, obtained with 32 W femtosecond and 187 W picosecond laser powers. The findings indicate that ultrashort pulses in the mid-fluence regime yield most efficient material removal. In conclusion, from the results of this analysis, a range of optimum processing parameters are derived feasible to enhance machining efficiency, throughput and quality in high-rate micromachining. The work carried out here clearly opens the way to significant industrial applications.

High-rate laser microprocessing using a polygon scanner system

This paper discusses results obtained in high-rate laser microprocessing by using a high average power high-pulse repetition frequency ultrashort pulse laser source in combination with an in-house developed polygon scanner system. With the recent development of ultrashort pulse laser systems supplying high average power of hundreds watts and megahertz pulse repetition rates, a significant increase of the productivity can potentially be achieved in micromachining. This permits upscaling of the ablation rates and large-area processing, gaining increased interest of the ultrashort pulse laser technology for a large variety of industrial processes. However, effective implementation of high average power lasers in microprocessing requires fast deflection of the laser beam. For this, high-rate laser processing by using polygon scanner systems provide a sustainable technological solution. In this study, a picosecond laser system with a maximum average power of 100 W and a repetition rate up to 20 MHz was used. In raster scanning using the polygon scanner, the laser beam with a focus spot diameter of 44 μm was deflected with scan speeds of several hundred meters per second. The two-dimensional scanning capability of the polygon scanner supplied a scan field of 325 × 325 mm. The investigations were focused on high-rate large-area laser ablation of technical grade stainless steel as well as selective thin film ablation from bulk substrates. By variation of the processing parameters laser fluence, as well as temporal and spatial pulse-to-pulse distance, their impact onto the ablation process was evaluated with respect to the ablation rate, processing rate, surface quality, and ablation efficiency.

Nonlinear optical microscopy for immunoimaging: a custom optimized system of high-speed, large-area, multicolor imaging.

The nonlinear optical microscopy has become the current state-of-the-art for intravital imaging. Due to its advantages of high resolution, superior tissue penetration, lower photodamage and photobleaching, as well as intrinsic z-sectioning ability, this technology has been widely applied in immunoimaging for a decade. However, in terms of monitoring immune events in native physiological environment, the conventional nonlinear optical microscope system has to be optimized for live animal imaging. Generally speaking, three crucial capabilities are desired, including high-speed, large-area and multicolor imaging. Among numerous high-speed scanning mechanisms used in nonlinear optical imaging, polygon scanning is not only linearly but also dispersion-freely with high stability and tunable rotation speed, which can overcome disadvantages of multifocal scanning, resonant scanner and acousto-optical deflector (AOD). However, low frame rate, lacking large-area or multicolor imaging ability make current polygonbased nonlinear optical microscopes unable to meet the requirements of immune event monitoring. We built up a polygon-based nonlinear optical microscope system which was custom optimized for immunoimaging with high-speed, large-are and multicolor imaging abilities. Firstly, we validated the imaging performance of the system by standard methods. Then, to demonstrate the ability to monitor immune events, migration of immunocytes observed by the system based on typical immunological models such as lymph node, footpad and dorsal skinfold chamber are shown. Finally, we take an outlook for the possible advance of related technologies such as sample stabilization and optical clearing for more stable and deeper intravital immunoimaging. This study will be helpful for optimizing nonlinear optical microscope to obtain more comprehensive and accurate information of immune events.