Gooch & Housego Launch the New Non-Hermetic Fibre Q-Switch

Gooch and Housego are pleased to announce the release of a new addition to its successful fibre coupled acousto-optic modulator product line.

Following the success of their fully hermetic, “Fibre-Q” product launched in 2009, designed to perform in the most demanding environmental conditions, G&H have developed a non-hermetic version of the product.

The non-hermetic Fibre-Q utilizes the same reliable core build process of the hermetic Fibre-Q and retains the same optical performance while offering reduction in size, weight, and cost. The non-hermetic Fibre-Q has been designed for use in high volume OEM industrial applications in which environmental conditions are more likely to be controlled. In particular, G&H expect the product to appeal to the very competitive industrial pulsed fibre laser market. The increasing demand in laser sources for a multitude of material processing applications has led to an increasing demand for fibre laser sources, which in turn has led to a demand for specialist fibre coupled components such as acousto-optic modulators.

G&H have been a dominant player in the acousto-optics market for many years and have supplied hundreds of thousands of Q-switches in to the industrial laser market. In-house control of crystal polishing and coating process has enabled the ability to produce high volumes of components in a reproducible manner with high quality and laser damage threshold. Combining G&H core technologies of acousto-optics and fibre optics has resulted in the development of a family of fibre coupled AO modulators for the most demanding applications.