Diffractive optical elements for making CO2 laser material processing

In this paper, a kind of diffractive optical element (DOE) was designed and fabricated. For the design, an improved Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm and an approach of aperture division are presented. The DOE was generated by means of photolithogrpahy and ion etching techniques with 16 phase levels. The experimental results of quenching processing of steel parts by inserting the DOE into CO2 laser beam are satisfactory. The DOE is of an advantage of that applicable to a variety of multimode laser beams.© (1995) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.