Soon after Panasonic's acquisition of TeraDiode in January 2017, Forward Photonics spun out of that firm. With a former TeraDiode founder at the head of the spinout along with other key personnel, the firm is organized around producing mid-wave infrared (MWIR) sources based around quantum cascade laser (QCL) emitters, FP claims industry-leading power and brightness performance, form the same wavelength beam combination (WBC) technology developed by TeraDiodes founders and licensed from Lincoln Laboratory (MIT). Based around a diffraction grating and precise laser alignment, the WBC technique enables power scaling with a combination of sources emitting at slightly different wavelengths. Beam quality. With military applications being the initial focus, the firms initial products include a 25 W laser based on beam-combined QCLs, with close to a diffraction-limited beam quality (a quoted M2 value of less than 1.5). FP has also developed a 10 W air-cooled version of the laser, and says that the high-brightness system will be game changing in many applications, including stand-off detection, remote sensing, spotting gas leaks and spills, combustion and trace-gas detection, chemical analysis spectroscopy, ranging, interferometry, metrology, and even materials processing.
