Picosecond thin-disk laser platform PERLA for multi-beam micromachining

Multi-beam micro- and nano-machining of material surfaces has been getting more important because of its great potential to increase production speed of large size laser induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS). Fast and cheap production of engineered surfaces structures can bring unique properties of surfaces like tailored wettability, friction, antibacterial properties, etc., to mass-production with consequence in, for example, energy and costs savings. However, tailoring of long-term stable interference patterns from ultrashort laser pulses requires an extremely stable laser system with nearly diffraction-limited output beams. HiLASE Centre developed such a thin-disk-based Yb:YAG sub-picosecond laser platform, PERLA, providing average output power up to 0.5 kW with 2nd and 4th harmonic generation extensions and demonstrated its potential for direct laser interference patterning (DLIP). In this paper, we focus on details of the thin-disk PERLA laser. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement