MIT Lincoln Lab Spinout Creates a Direct-Diode Laser Strong Enough to Cut & Weld Metal

Diode lasers help power your everyday. The low-cost, compact laser is used to scan the merchandise you impulsively bought at Target, fire up your DVD player and guide people's attention during a powerpoint presentation. TeraDiode, a spinout from the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, is creating a new daily use for diode lasers, however — one more powerful than ever before. The Wilmington, Mass.-based company is commercializing a four-kilowatt diode laser system, called TeraBlade, capable of cutting and welding metal, according to MIT News. Although attempts have been made to create industrial strength lasers before, the site writes, "Boosting power usually means decreasing beam quality, or focus. And the beam never gets intense enough to melt metal." Until now. Behind the TeraBlade is wavelength beam combining technology, developed by former Lincoln Lab researchers and TeraDiode co-founders Robin Huang and Bien Chann. The Lincoln Lab published notes on WBC and its power in 2012, explaining: WBC spatially merges multiple wavelength sources into a single high-intensity beam with an order-of-magnitude improvement in brightness compared to a single source. The TeraBlade utilizes light directly from the diodes. Benefits from that include: ultra-high spatial brightness, power scaling, high spectral brightness, wavelength stability and wavelength selectability. Or, in other jaw-dropping statistics, the ability to cut through a half-inch of steel by outputting a beam roughly 100 times brighter than competing direct-diode laser models. TeraDiode has raised $13.2 million in funding since its official founding in 2009, and has attracted customers in Japan and Germany, where energy costs are high, as well as global builders of laser-based machines and system integrators, according to MIT News. “More broadly, our vision is to revolutionize the laser industry," Huang told MIT News, adding the company is also experimenting with defense applications, given the laser's compact design could be easily mounted on a fighter jet. “The sky is the limit," Huang said, "literally.”