LIMO, Dortmond, Germany, starts the new year off by expanding its product portfolio with the introduction of the diffractive beam splitter. Unlike the conventional binary diffractive optical elements (DOE), the LIMO beam splitter has a continuous profile. This property has the advantage that undesirable ghost beam effects do not appear. The result is a very high diffractive efficiency of 95% to 97%, which LIMO says it has already successfully demonstrated.
Depending on the design of the beam splitter, large beam angles are possible. Additionally, the split beams can be focused by means of optional lenses. Furthermore, the properties of the profile have an impact on the amount of intensity variation between the spots, which is less than +/- 5%.
LIMO delivers customized beam splitters consisting of different materials like fused silica or CaF2 for high power and UV applications. The LIMO beam splitter is most suitable for the widely used solid state lasers with a wavelength of 355 nm, 532 nm, and 1064 nm. Especially in precise laser materials processing (e.g., surface structuring, sawing, cutting, and perforation), the beam splitter is often required due to the need for splitting materials into several identical spots.