The main potential market that I know for high power solid state lasers is in the medical industry to replace Nd YAG based lasers for surgical applications (cauterization). If the power get much higher then there might be additional applications in industry. You should know, that solid state lasers have a much greater beam divergence then other lasers you are used to, and the beam divergence is usually assymetric. One can use aspherical lenses to colimate the beam but the result is a larger diameter beam. I am not sure if their 20W laser is from a single chip or is this from a number of parrallel emitters in an array.
Their uniqueness is the high yield they get which should improve their profitability. The current capitalization of about $30,000,000 is quite rich if they intend to stay only in the high power portion of the market. In the lower power segment of the market, such lasers are used for laser disk players and other laser disk memory systems. This is where the millions and millions of pieces are sold at very low prices per piece. I do not think they have the manufacturing capability to address this market, however. Furthermore, the technological approach they are using (Electron Beam epitaxy) while providing a more controlled environment of deposition then the traditional MOCVD (Metallo-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition), is much more expensive and not as amenable to mass production. For the high power part of the market, the EB approach provides greater yields, because the exacting demands of high power lasers. This is not necessarily the case for very low power lasers mentioned above.
If all their market is replacement of Nd-YAG medical lasers, I do not think that this is a good investment at all. I doubt that they will get directly into the medical lasers themselves, they will probably supply other companies in the field. Some four five years ago, I read an estimate from Sony, that the cost per watt of solid state lasers is going to decline to $100/watt, so at 20 Watts it is $2000 bucks per unit. Let's say that the cost right now is still three time this long range target, they will get $6000. The actual end user of the chip (the supplier to the medical profession) will then have to add a controlled power supply and associated high power optics to make it a medical alser that can be used (after the FDA authorized the use) by physicians. If eveything is nice and dandy you get a piece of equipment that sells for about $20,000 much out of the reach of individual practices (for simple cauterizations as the Nd-YaAG is used), but still with some major advantages over traditional Nd-YAG.
I estimate that once the PMA has gone through, the market per year could reach about 2000 units, if the price drops to the long term forecast, it could grow to between 6000 to 10000 units/year (and this is a big assumption since it assumes that most pratices will use it). Which ever way you play it, if they are targetting only the medical market and supply an intermediary producer you are talking about sales in the range of $6 MM to $20 MM, best best case and everything is nice and there is no competition. Unlikely. Furthermore, before such large numbers can be achieved they need to go through the PMA route. This might not be too bad if other outfits have done that for them with existing technology.
I would not be too enthused about this unless they find some non medical massive markets.
Zeev |
