Alfalight Develops Laser Diodes for SHEDS

Alfalight Inc. of Madison, Wis., was awarded $1.4 million in funding for Phase II of the Super High Efficiency Diode Sources (SHEDS) program, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The allotment follows the company’s completion of Phase I, in which it developed diode lasers that exceeded 65 percent efficiency. In the second phase, Alfalight has a target of 80 percent power conversion efficiency in a 480-W stacked array at 50 °C.

In other business, Alfalight will develop high-brightness multimode diode lasers with 1 kW of output under a 12-month, $4.5 million contract from the US Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md. The technology is expected to produce techniques for combining the output of several laser emitters into a compact spot. The program will enable the development of high-power modules for pumping fiber lasers and for direct materials processing.