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QPC Lasers Inc, which manufactures high-power lasers for the consumer electronics, industrial, defense, and medical markets, has been awarded a $750,000 contract to develop and deliver BrightLase high-power fiber-laser pump engines to a US government Department of Defense customer for airborne directed energy weapons applications. This award is a follow-on contract to several previous awards which, in conjunction with QPC’s ongoing contract with this US government customer, totals $2.5m since 2007.

“QPC’s chip-based semiconductor lasers offer three unique elements crucial in achieving a truly deployable high-energy laser weapon: high power, compactness and lightweight efficient design,” says Dr Jeffrey Ungar, co-founder and CEO. “Today’s high-energy lasers are based on inefficient and bulky traditional technologies such as chemical lasers, but the future belongs to these more efficient and compact diode-pumped lasers,” he adds. “As we continue our development of these cost-effective high-power laser prototypes, we continue to expand our capabilities in other commercial markets for our technologies, such as consumer electronics and medical, and to identify potential new customers around the world.”

The new contract allows QPC to further increase the power from levels targeted in previous contracts and accelerates the development and delivery of high-power laser prototypes for potential deployment on the customer’s platforms. Under a previous and related contract, in April QPC delivered a BrightLase high-power laser to the same customer.

The prototypes use three of QPC’s patented and proprietary semiconductor laser technologies that are designed to achieve a ten-fold reduction in cost, size, and weight compared to conventional laser technology:

• Low-cost, high-power HPSEL chip technology that enables QPC to place hundreds of high-brightness surface-emitting lasers onto a single chip, which should enable products to achieve high power and brightness with size, cost, and weight savings of more than 10x compared with conventional laser technologies, the firm reckons.

• Rugged military fiber-coupled module production capability designed for reliable operation in demanding military environments applications.

• BrightLase high-power high-brightness lasers that are designed to produce laser beams more than ten times brighter than conventional semiconductor lasers used in industrial and medical applications.

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