The laser industry is changing rapidly, full of challenges and opportunities, and physicists with multidisciplinary training will be ideal candidates for this field. The company is located in Bozeman, Montana, USA, and mainly produces laser pointer and optical devices.
We have been developing for decades since the laser was invented, but many aspects of the optoelectronics industry are still in their infancy. This can’t help but remind people of the electronics industry in the 1960s. At that time, lasers seemed to be everywhere, but it was often found that many things inside these delicately packed products were still entangled with tape (in fact, it is not exaggerated), and those operating in their own garage The products developed by the small companies can be comparable to those of large international companies.
In this large environment, the inherent multidisciplinary nature of physics training means that people with a physics background are more likely to succeed, because every day you may need to deal with chemistry, biology, computers, mechanical engineering, materials science, or fluid mechanics There are occasional physical and optical problems.
The cause of the problem varies. Chemical problems exist in most laser systems. For example, photochemistry can cause material denaturation, and ion migration can cause color center and other local problems. But the most headaches are light pollution and light damage, the causes of these problems are different.
In a particularly annoying case, we traced the source of light pollution and found that the odor in the sewer entered the laboratory from an abandoned floor drain, and volatile organic gases often condensed on the surface of the optical device. These organic gases come from a wide range of sources, including oil stains and hand creams on the hands of experimenters, residues of transparent tape, and even gases emitted from wire insulation.
We have tried our best to realize that ozone will destroy the optical film, and the ultraviolet light generated by the red laser pointer will interact with the air to generate ozone, which shows that it is very necessary to remove the air in the enclosed laser, especially the high-power laser. However, the nitrogen used to remove the air will also react with some coatings. In addition, some coatings will also change their performance when the humidity is zero, so we must carefully choose the method of excluding air.