The importance of the 2+ μm spectral band (short-wave infrared spectral band – SWIR) is widely recognized and has led to the recent commercialization of 2 μm fibre sources. However, their relatively large size, and also their performance usually fixed by the provider with very little flexibility or at the cost of expensive customized designs, are critical limitations towards wide deployment. There is therefore a current technological gap between customer needs and SWIR available technologies. This significantly reduces the range of potential customers and hinders exploiting the full potential of the SWIR, in particular for light detection and ranging (LiDAR) markets, sensing or for processing of plastics. In short 2+ μm SWIR fibre lasers are essential to several market segments but state-of-the art 2+ μm commercial fibre lasers don’t satisfy the need for portable, affordable and simple solutions as required for many end-user applications.
The ERC PoC SWIP had for goal to move our 2+ μm technology closer to commercialization. We developed a portable prototype operating at 2.036 μm with more than 12 μJ pulse energy readily usable. We also performed advanced system's development as to show the versatily of our design in terms of operating wavelength, output pulse energy and shape simply by modify the driving signal and without modification of the core of the light source.The technological maturity and reliability of such laser is now a reality and their wide availability will soon be coming to all end users.
