Design and fabrication of a low cost matrix of pyroelectric transducers for applications in CO2 laser systems

The use of CO2 power lasers systems for industrial (welding, marking, etc.) and medical (surgery and therapy, etc.) applications are now numerous and increasing in importance. These systems necessitate of low-cost detectors able to measure the laser beam characteristics for process optimisation. Pyroelectric sensors based on PVDF polymer foils are suitable for designing detectors, in the mid IR region, with fast time response for controlling the CO2 laser pulses at high repetition frequency (PRF >100Hz). We designed and built single and multi element detectors, able to follow the laser pulses with rising times ranging from 0.05 ms to 0.2 ms, with 2 ms (FWHM) duration.