5 Must-Have Features in a Solid State Laser

28 Jul.,2025

 

solid-state lasers - RP Photonics

The RP Photonics Buyer's Guide contains 137 suppliers for solid-state lasers. Among them:

You can find more information on our web, so please take a look.

Stuttgart Instruments

The Stuttgart Instruments Primus is an ultrafast (fs) mode-locked oscillator, based on the solid-state technology. It provides a high average output power combined with a superior low noise level (shot noise limit above 300 kHz) and an excellent long-term stability.

The solid-state technology with  nm central wavelength enables the excellent long-term stability by providing several watts of output power at 40 MHz pulse repetition rate and 450 fs pulse duration. Its superior low noise level reaches the shot noise limit above 300 kHz. In combination with the stability and output power, it enables ultrasensitive measurements and makes the Primus perfectly suited as pump source for frequency converters like the Stuttgart Instruments Alpha. The entire system is encapsulated in a solid CNC-cut and water-cooled housing, thus reaching excellent robustness against external perturbations.

Monocrom

Monocrom offers diode-pumped solid state lasers for medical, material processing, LiDAR and spectroscopy applications as well as for laser pumping:

  • LQ-527-12: a frequency-doubled Nd:YLF laser emitting up to 1 mJ at 527 nm
  • Multi-Path 532: a photocoagulation laser emitting up to 8 W cw or 15 W qcw at 532 nm
  • CiOM lasers emitting nanosecond pulses at 526.5 nm

RPMC Lasers

RPMC Lasers offers the widest selection of solid-state lasers in North America. From ≈  standard products to full customization capabilities, we are sure to have what you need: pulsed and CW sources ranging in wavelength from the UV through the LWIR regimes. Pulsed lasers include DPSS lasers, fiber lasers, microlasers/microchip Lasers, ultrafast lasers, and more. Single- & multimode CW DPSS lasers, modules & LD modules are available in both fiber-coupled and free space configurations, as well as gas and fiber lasers, line modules, and many laser diode types, including free space & fiber-coupled diodes, bars & stacks, wavelength stabilized laser diodes, quantum cascade laser diodes, and more! Let RPMC help you find the right laser today!

Megawatt Lasers

MegaWatt Lasers Inc. offers CTH:YAG and Er:YAG resonators. These are flash lamp pumped and water cooled. They are optimized for energy and repetition rate. The CTH:YAG resonator is able to generate 4-J pulses at a repetition rate of 10 Hz, while the Er:YAG resonator reaches 3 J at also 10 Hz. Both allow for adjustable pulse widths.

GWU-Lasertechnik

GWU-Lasertechnik provides all-solid-state tunable laser solutions. We have more than 30 years of experience in lasers, non-linear optics and manufacturing. The sophisticated optical and mechanical design of our devices ensure excellent performance, highest reliability and longest lifetime. Our rugged all-solid-state Laser technology does not require any consumable supplies and is thus providing most convenient usability, longest lifetime and excellent total costs of ownership. GWU’s widely tunable laser sources cover the spectral range from the deep-UV at <190 nm to the IR at > nm continuously to serve even most demanding applications in science and industry.

Edmund Optics

Edmund Optics offers a wide range of diode laser sources, including machine vision lasers, life science lasers, metrology lasers, industrial and point lasers, and material processing lasers.

Teem Photonics

Lasers from Teem Photonics are all air-cooled diode-pumped solid-state lasers, which are passively Q-switched to generate sub-nanosecond pulses, and in some cases combined with a fiber amplifier. Due to nonlinear frequency converters, available emission wavelengths are  nm, 532 nm, 355 nm, 266 nm and 213 nm.

EKSPLA

EKSPLA offers a wide range of femtosecond, picosecond and nanosecond lasers as well as tunable wavelength systems for research and industrial applications.

AMS Technologies

Our port­folio of diode-pumped solid state (DPSS) lasers with wavelengths from 213 to  nm includes CW and pulsed systems, frequency-doubled (532 nm) or frequency-tripled (355 nm) models, and Q-switched DPSS lasers:

  • actively Q-switched DPSS lasers, short-pulse output, single shot to >50 kHz, very low jitter
  • DPSS lasers emitting very short laser pulses, 4 VIS wavelengths pulse-to-pulse switchable for multispectral photoacoustic imaging
  • ultra-compact sub-nanosecond lasers
  • high-output-power sealed sub-nanosecond lasers
  • high-performance triggered and narrow-linewidth sub-nanosecond lasers
  • high-peak-power, “hundreds of ps pulse” lasers
  • very-high-output-power amplified lasers with down to 100 ps pulses
  • very-high-peak and output power, “hundreds of ps pulse” amplified lasers
  • customized DPSS laser systems, tailored to your requirements

HÜBNER Photonics

HÜBNER Photonics offer diode-pumped solid state lasers in the Cobolt 04-01, 05-01 and 08-01 Series, as well as the Cobolt Skyra and C-WAVE. All our lasers are high performance with excellent wavelength stability and accuracy as well as power stability and very low noise.

Lumibird

Lumibird nanosecond Q-switched Nd:YAG lasers are well known for their ruggedness and versatility. From 5 mJ to 2.3 J at  nm, from single pulse to 400 Hz, they can be diode-pumped (compactness, ease of use) or flashlamp-pumped (high energy), and are available at 532 nm, 355 nm, 266 nm and 1.5 µm. Double pulse models are also proposed for applications in fluid mechanics (PIV).

CNI Laser

CNI offers a wide range of all-solid-state lasers not only concerning wavelengths, but also in terms of features, including single frequency lasers, narrow linewidth lasers, low noise lasers, high power and high energy lasers, mode-locked picosecond lasers and Q-switched lasers.

Radiantis

Radiantis broadly tunable lasers are based on solid-state technology. Femtosecond and picosecond pulses as well as continuous-wave (CW) temporal regimes are provided with automatic tuning across the UV, visible and IR.

Bright Solutions

Bright Solutions offers a range of diode-pumped solid-state lasers, including

The Five Main Types of Lasers - Laserax

Lasers are everywhere around us. Surgeons use them for eye surgery and cancer treatments. Manufacturers use them for material processing to cut, mark, weld, clean, and texture various types of materials. Some people need them for tattoo or hair removal, and everyone has seen laser light shows during music concerts. More recently, new applications like laser holography are emerging. 

Different types of lasers are needed for these applications. Based on their gain medium, lasers are classified into five main types: 

  • Gas Lasers
  • Solid-State Lasers
  • Fiber Lasers
  • Liquid Lasers (Dye Lasers)
  • Semiconductor Lasers (Laser Diodes)

Additionally, these five types of lasers can be divided into subcategories based on their mode of operation: continuous-wave lasers and pulsed lasers. Furthermore, there are also multiple types of pulsed lasers.

Before differentiating the types of lasers, it’s good to remember what a laser actually is.

What Is a Laser?

A laser is a device that generates light in the form of a laser beam. A laser beam is different from a light beam in that its rays are monochromatic (a single color), coherent (of the same frequency and waveform), and collimated (going in the same direction).

Lasers provide this “perfect information” which is ideal for applications that require high precision.

Lasers are comprised of three main components:

  • The energy source pumps light into a gain medium. It varies according to the type of laser. It could be a laser diode, an electrical discharge, a chemical reaction, a flash lamp, or even another laser.
  • The gain medium emits light of a specific wavelength when excited by light. It is said to be the source of optical gain. Lasers are typically named after their gain medium. In a CO2 laser for example, the gain medium is CO2 gas.
  • The resonator amplifies the optical gain through mirrors that surround the gain medium. These include bulk mirrors in solid-state lasers, cleaved or coated facets in laser diodes, and Bragg reflectors in fiber lasers.

Gas Lasers

A gas laser is a laser in which an electric current is sent through a gas to generate light through a process known as population inversion. Examples of gas lasers include carbon dioxide (CO2) lasers, helium–neon lasers, argon lasers, krypton lasers, and excimer lasers.

Gas lasers are used in a wide variety of applications, including holography, spectroscopy, barcode scanning, air pollution measurements, material processing, and laser surgery.

Goto Beamtech to know more.

CO2 lasers are probably the most widely known gas lasers and are mainly used for laser marking, laser cutting, and laser welding.

Solid-State Lasers

Solid-state lasers use a solid (crystals or glasses) mixed with a rare earth element as their source of optical gain. The mixed element is typically neodymium, chromium, erbium, thulium, or ytterbium.

The most known solid-state laser is the ruby laser, since it is the first laser ever constructed. The Nd:YAG laser (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet) is also common in material processing applications.

Solid-state lasers are also used for LIDAR technology as well as various medical applications, including tattoo and hair removal, tissue ablation, and kidney stone removal.

Fiber Lasers

A fiber laser is a special type of solid-state laser that is a category of its own. In fiber lasers, the gain medium is an optical fiber (silica glass) mixed with a rare-earth element.

The light guiding properties of the optical fiber are what makes this type of laser so different: the laser beam is straighter and smaller than with other types of lasers, making it more precise. Fiber lasers are also renowned for their small footprint, good electrical efficiency, low maintenance and low operating costs.

Fiber lasers are used in a range of applications, including material processing (laser cleaning, texturing, cutting, welding, marking), medicine, and directed energy weapons.

Examples of fiber lasers used for these applications include ytterbium and erbium-doped fiber lasers.

Liquid Lasers (Dye Lasers)

A Liquid lasers use an organic dye in liquid form as their gain medium. They are also known as dye lasers and are used in laser medicine, spectroscopy, birthmark removal, and isotope separation.

One of the advantages of dye lasers is that they can generate a much wider range of wavelengths, making them good candidates to be tunable lasers, meaning that the wavelength can be controlled while in operation.

In laser isotope separation for example, lasers are tuned to specific atomic resonances. They are then tuned to a specific isotope to ionize the atoms, making them neutral as opposed to negatively or positively charged. They are then separated with an electric field, achieving what is called isotope separation.

Semiconductor Lasers (Laser Diodes)

Laser diodes, also called diode lasers and semiconductor lasers, are similar to regular diodes in that they have a positively-negatively (PN) charged junction. The difference is that laser diodes have an intrinsic layer at the PN junction made of materials that create spontaneous emission. The intrinsic layer is polished so that the generated photons are amplified, ultimately converting the electric current into laser light.

Although most semiconductor lasers are diode lasers, a few of them are not. This is because there are semiconductor lasers that do not use the diode structure, such as quantum cascade lasers and optically pumped semiconductor lasers.

Like fiber lasers, laser diodes can be classified as solid-state lasers since their gain medium is solid. However, they are in a category of their own because of their PN junction.

Laser diodes are often used as energy sources to pump other lasers. These lasers are referred to as diode-pumped lasers. In these cases, laser diodes are typically arrayed to pump more energy, as shown in the following image.

Laser diodes are extremely common. They are used in barcode readers, laser pointers, laser printers, laser scanners, and several other applications.

Laser Types by Mode of Operation

All types of lasers can operate using one of two methods: their laser beams can either be pulsed or continuous. This is what we call their mode of operation.

  • With continuous-wave lasers, there is a constant flow of energy, meaning that the laser continuously shoots a single, uninterrupted laser beam. The most common example of this is a laser pointer’s uninterrupted beam. Continuous-wave lasers are commonly used for laser cutting and laser welding.
  • With pulsed lasers, the laser beam is interrupted at regular intervals to allow the energy to build up and reach a higher peak power than continuous-wave lasers. The laser beam is released as pulses that have a specific duration called the pulsed duration. These high energy densities are required for many applications like spot welding and engraving.

Continuous-wave lasers may seem more powerful than pulsed lasers because the advertised laser power is typically much higher, but this can be misleading. This is because lasers are named according to their average laser power, and the average power of pulsed lasers is usually lower even if they reach higher peaks of power.

For example, a 6,000W continuous-wave laser continuously releases 6,000W of laser power. Conversely, a 100W pulsed laser can release pulses of 10,000W each.

Laser Types by Pulse Duration

Pulsed lasers are divided into several categories based on the duration of their pulses.

A modulator is used to control the number of pulses per second. As a result, each pulse has a precise duration, called pulse duration, pulse length, or pulse width. The pulse duration is the time between the beginning and the end of a pulse.

Several modulating methods are used to pulse laser beams: q-switching, gain-switching, and mode-locking are some examples. The shorter the pulse, the higher the energy peaks. Here are the most common units used to express pulse duration.

  • Milliseconds (one thousandth of a second) are the longest time units used to express pulse duration and have hence the lowest energy peaks. For example, laser hair removal pulses may vary between 5 ms and 60 ms depending on the hair thickness.
  • Microseconds (one millionth of a second) are probably the least common pulse durations They can be used for material processing applications, but the following pulse durations are more commonly used, as they offer more precision. Microsecond lasers can also be used for applications like spectroscopy and hair removal.
  • Nanoseconds (one billionth of a second) are very common pulse durations used for applications like laser material processing, distance measurements, and remote sensing. Laserax, for example, uses nanosecond fiber lasers to perform laser marking, cleaning, texturing, and engraving.
  • Picoseconds (one trillionth of a second) and femtoseconds (one quadrillionth of a second) are the shortest pulse durations, which is why the terms ultrashort pulses and ultrafast lasers are used. These lasers offer the most precise results and have the lowest heat affected zones. This prevents undesirable melting and allows for very precise engravings. They are used in material processing, medicine (such as eye surgery), microscopy, measurements, and telecommunications.

More Types of Lasers

As you can see, there are many ways to categorize lasers. Another way is by the laser wavelength, where you have infrared, near-infrared, visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray lasers.

Laser experts keep pushing the limits of laser technology, with new developments being made every year. As a result, the types of lasers are constantly evolving, and anyone looking to explore this world can expect a lifetime of discoveries.

Contact us to discuss your requirements of Solid State Laser. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.