Fused Silica for Material Processing & Industrial Applications

Laser Material Processing

Lasers have been used in a growing number of industrial applications for decades. While a CO₂ laser was the standard for a long time, the need for free space optics and the limited spectral range were significant drawbacks that gave rise to other laser types, such as diode and fiber lasers.

The prime advantage of these lasers is their compactness and their availability of different wavelengths. Contrary to CO₂ lasers, light of a shorter wavelength can be delivered to the working area using optical fused silica fibers. The focusing optics are made of fused silica as well.

Fused silica is the material of choice due to its low absorption (low loss) and high laser damage threshold enabling new applications like surface cleaning, structuring or even 3D printing. Heraeus offers a wide range of products tailored to the different applications.

Laser Cutting

Laser Welding

Laser Cleaning

Laser Marking

Laser Cutting

Cutting different materials is one of the major applications of lasers in material processing today. From very thin protective glass covers for displays of 0.3 mm and thinner to thick steel plates of more than 40 mm.

Further benefits are the fast speed and superior quality of cutting, that allows further processing steps to be skipped. The transmission fiber can be an essential element to tailor the laser beam properties e.g. by using multi cladding fibers with different light guiding areas or by a shaped fiber core, which allows to optimize the beam profile. Very often the laser beam passes a focusing optic before reaching the working plane. The components of the focusing head are often made of fused silica. The required quality depends on the laser properties, e.g. pulse duration, power level and beam size. The last fused silica component the beam passes is a protective window that prevents fumes or splatter of the processed material to reach the inside of the laser head damaging the coated components. This window is also often called a debris shield and a consumable.

Laser Welding

Laser welding of metals is common to join various parts. With laser technology it is meanwhile possible not only to weld the same materials, called a homogeneous weld. It is even possible to join different materials together, like copper and aluminum (heterogeneous weld).

Typical welding lasers run at 1070 nm with 2 to 16 kW power. For high reflective and heat conductive copper or gold, pulsed lasers at 400 – 550 nm are often applied due to an improved absorption. These materials are getting more important in e-mobility.

We are offering fused silica materials for optics and optical fibers to support all kinds of laser systems with highest performance.

Laser Cleaning

Laser cleaning of surfaces is a rising application. It is a fast way to prepare surfaces for following production steps like painting, welding, or gluing. For example, iron surfaces can be cleaned from rust, color, oil, or deposits from earlier production steps. This technique can also be applied to produce a selective conductive area.

A huge advantage of laser cleaning is the ability to locally clean, without the need of masks, that are needed in conventional cleaning methods like sand blasting or chemical cleaning. Furthermore, avoiding high amounts of toxic detergents and waste protects the environment.

Laser Marking

Marking of products is a widespread application. Some examples include the declaration of ingredients in consumer products, traceability of medical products or giving technical information on electronic products.

Depending on the material to be marked, different lasers are used and therefore suitable fused silica materials must be selected to transmit the light. Quite common are pulsed lasers for this application. Due to the high peak powers the coupling conditions and damage threshold of the fiber materials are crucial parameters. We can support you to perfect these conditions.

Brochure: Specialty Fiber Preforms for Industrial Applications PDF | 1.65 MB

Laser Pumping

Laser Flash Lamps

For laser-source applications, laser beams are generated by pumping energy into a laser medium. There are several methods of pumping, but if special lamps are used the basic options are cw-laser lamps (continuous wave) or DC pulsed flash lamps.

Depending on which laser medium is to be excited and which lamp type is used, Heraeus offers a wide range of tailor-made solutions, e.g. undoped quartz glass (Synthetic fused quartz (SFQ) - Suprasil 130, Clear fused quartz (CFQ) - HLQ210, Heralux plus) or doped quartz glass (Titanium doped quartz (TDQ) - M235 plus, Cerium doped quartz (CDQ) - M382 plus). Common to all types of quartz glass are the consistently high levels of efficiency and stability - even with short and intense pulse rates and long lifetimes requirements.

Pulsed flash lamps are being used more and more often, even in non-laser applications, e.g. medical or cosmetic applications as IPL (Intense Pulse Lamps) , or for sun simulation or semiconductor processing.

More information about tubes for lamp manufacturing

Fiber Optic Lasers

Laser fibers and fiber optic laser systems are a growing market for material processing or medical laser. Many of these active fibers consist of an active core and a pump cladding. Depending on the power level and application this pump cladding consists of undoped fused silica and a fluorine containing polymer or a combination of undoped and highly fluorine doped silica to guide the pump light in high power lasers.

The pump efficiency can even be increased by a non-round shape of the pump cladding. We offer tubes with a round or shaped geometry for these applications and, if required, a highly fluorine containing fused silica cladding tailored for the different applications.

More information about laser fibers products

Curing & Coating Processing

UV and IR industrial processes have long been established routes in the industry. High purity quartz glass is one of the key materials in the manufacture of related equipment, tools and modules. Its use translates to higher performing systems, and for end users – a lower cost of ownership (efficiency).

UV Curing

Since its inception 50 years ago, UV curing has been established prominently in industry processes – across various applications like printing, coating, and finishing steps. The UV curing process uses UV light to create a crosslink of polymers by a photochemical reaction. Even if UV LEDs are used to generate UV light, especially in new systems, there are still a wide range of applications that use the high power of conventional UV lamps, e.g. medium pressure or metal halide lamps.

The Heraeus quartz glass fusion process is ideally designed to enable high-purity quartz tubes with excellent thermal stability to produce high-performance UV lamps, even when the lamps are operated at the lamp limit. To further the potential and efficiency of UV, the light can be guided to areas that are normally difficult to reach. It is possible to optimally target UV activations through customized UV fiber bundles (synthetic quartz glass).

IR Coating

Industrial heating processes are used in manufacturing of many products and have become an indispensable part of modern production processes. This value is brought to many processes – drying or curing coatings, molding joining or general thermal treatment.

Reliable, fast and powerful infrared emitters can only be designed with high-quality quartz glass, e.g. Heraeus quartz glass HLQ200 .

More information about infrared emitters and systems for industrial heat processes

Further Information and Contact