The future carbon dioxide lasers will develop in the following directions:

1. High-power cross-flow carbon dioxide lasers

These are used for laser processing and heat treatment. The laser system is in an integrated box structure. The upper box of the box has an integrated discharge chamber, heat exchanger, fan system, inlet and outlet deflector, and optical resonator. The lower box of the box has a laser power supply, charging and discharging system, vacuum pump, ballast resistor box, and control box. Compared with existing technologies, this invention has the characteristics of a compact structure, convenient installation, debugging and maintenance, high efficiency, and small overall size. It is mainly used for welding of diamond tools, automotive gears, automotive airbag gas generators, etc.; laser surface quenching and cladding technology and its special applications in surface melting and quenching of steel rolls and surface repair of petrochemical parts.

2. Acousto-optic Q-switched carbon dioxide laser

The acousto-optic Q-switched carbon dioxide laser is mainly used to meet the application requirements in laser ranging, environmental detection, space communication, and research on the interaction mechanism between laser and matter. The laser pulse repetition frequency is 1Hz to 50KHz. When operating at 1kHz, the output laser pulse width is 180ns, the peak power is 4062W, which is basically consistent with the theoretical calculation. The results show that by optimizing the acousto-optic crystal (AO) and designing the resonator reasonably, it can achieve high repetition frequency, narrow pulse width and peak power output of a compact carbon dioxide laser, and realize wavelength tuning and encoded output of this laser through the design mode of grating selection and TTL signal control.

3. Compact long-life RF-excited waveguide carbon dioxide laser

To enable carbon dioxide lasers to be more widely applied in industrial processing and military fields, the laser housing adopts aluminum alloy extruded profiles, replaces the traditional wire-wound inductors with disc inductors, and adopts a full-metal sealing process. A compact long-life RF-excited waveguide carbon dioxide laser has been developed. It can output continuous or pulsed laser at a modulation frequency of no more than 20kHz. The output power is 30W. The measured working life is greater than 1500h, and the storage life exceeds 1.5A. The results show that this laser has the characteristics of a compact structure, stable output power, long working life, continuous and pulsed modulation operation, etc. It can not only meet the processing of various materials, but also be applied in the military field.

4. New portable TEA carbon dioxide laser

The new portable TEA carbon dioxide laser is a new portable transverse excitation atmospheric pressure carbon dioxide laser. The DC power supply uses four 5V rechargeable batteries and can operate continuously at 1Hz repetition frequency for 1H. The size of the entire laser (including power supply and control system) is 200mm×200mm×360mm, and the weight is less than 8kg. The laser uses ultraviolet corona pre-ionization, and the discharge is uniform and stable. Under high oscillation conditions, the laser pulse output energy reaches 35mj, and the output pulse width is 70ns.

5. High-power continuous carbon dioxide laser

In response to the problem of cracks and blade deformation of helicopter engine turbine blades caused by continuous laser cladding, a new power control scheme was adopted on a 5kW continuous cross-flow carbon dioxide laser. Through software and related control, pulsed laser power output was achieved, overcoming the cost and stability problems brought by high-power switching power supplies. The pulse modulation frequency can reach 5Hz. When using a peak power of 4kW and a pulse repetition frequency of 4Hz with a duty cycle of 20%, a fusion experiment of alloy powder StelliteX-40 was carried out on the K403 joint surface of the engine blade. The results show that the heat affected zone after cladding is reduced by 50% compared to continuous laser, the hardness is increased by 5%, and the interface bonding performance is equivalent to the base material, without cladding cracks and blade deformation.