Coherent (COHR) : Anyone else holding? Message Board

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Biotech / Medical : Coherent (COHR) : Anyone else holding?

COHR 161.42

-3.2%

9:58 AM EST

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To: Sam Citron who wrote (260)	10/16/1997 12:18:00 PM
From: Toby	of 788

HeNe bar scanners were the first bigtime gas laser application. Everything sold today in that channel is based on red diode lasers. Many companies supply this commodity. Diodes lasers are good in the IR and red, but are only just reaching the green and blue. The HeNe is an example how diode lasers can replace a gas laser technology outright. As semiconductors are further developed to laser in the orange, green, blue, violet and uv using GaN and InGaAlP materials, other technologies like the HeCd and blue Ar are in jeopardy. A second development is a combination diode/solid state laser replacing a gas laser... By butt-ending a laser diode against the right crystal or two, one can double the frequency wiht reasonable efficiency, for example turning an IR laser into a green one. This is eating away at the Ar laser market. COHR's own Verdi uses diode pump lasers to excite a YAG bar at 1064nm which then is doubled through a second crystal to give green at 532 nm. The whole thing can plug into the wall and sit on top of your hand, as opposed to an Ar laser which requires a high voltage pumping lamp and a long cavity and produces light less efficiently. So far, semiconductor diode lasers have replaced some lasers outright, and improved some other solid state lasers, such as the YAG, by pumping them more efficiently than the old flashlamp technology. New developments in non-linear crystals have permitted more wavelengths to be squeezed out of existing technologies. Coherent is working on the new solutions, but will in any case see existing business pressured by the transition. The decline of conventional gas lasers is a given. What's not is who will dominate the new solid state lasers.

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