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Well, it's time to for us to sign off from LASER 2007. Our feet are tired, our notebooks are full, and our heads are full to brimming with all the new technologies presented at the show.
Everyone we spoke to agreed that LASER 2007 was bigger and better that the last event in 2005. Exhibitors reported busy booths, numerous new sales leads, and - even better - customers suggesting new applications that will help to drive future product innovation.
Such was the buzz of the show that Helmut Kessler, general manager of CVI Technical optics, suggested to me that LASER should become an annual event. We'd love to know what you think about this radical - or some would say, logical - idea.
On behalf of the whole optics.org team, we hope you've enjoyed reading our blog. And now we'd like you to do something for us: tell us what you think of our coverage, or any other aspect of LASER 2007, by using the commenting tool at the end of each post. It won't take long, and will play a crucial role in extending the information contained here.
Goodbye, and see you next time!
I found one of the best examples of how laser sources developed for cutting-edge scientific research can drive the commercial optics industry on the Time-Bandwidth booth. The Swiss company, which was set up in 1994 as a spin-off from the ETH Zurich's ultrafast laser physics group, specializes in producing passively mode-locked lasers that generate femtosecond and picosecond light pulses.
Time-Bandwidth's Christoph Rüttimann told me that the company's diode-pumped solid-state lasers were originally developed for research groups to study chemical and molecular processes. But its latest generation of laser modules has also been designed as turn-key solutions for OEM applications such as micromachining, semiconductor processing and medical and life-science diagnostics, where the use of ultrashort pulses enables high peak powers while avoiding thermal damage to the material.
The company's high-power Fortis laser, for example, can produce laser pulses of less than 800 fs at 1030 nm with a repetition rate of 40--60 MHz and an average output power of 50 W. “This is the most powerful ultrafast oscillator system available on the market,” said Rüttiman. “The oscillator-only, amplifier-free design ensures particularly reliable and stable operation.”
What makes Time-Bandwidth's lasers different is the use of a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM), a mode-locking element that was first invented at ETH Zurich by Ursula Keller. Time-Bandwidth has continued to work with Keller to improve the device design, the fabrication process and the long-term device reliability to produce a laser system that is robust enough for industrial applications.
The company has SESAM device designs that operate at wavelengths ranging from less than 800 nm to more than 1600 nm, pulse widths from femtoseconds to nanoseconds, and power levels from milliwatts up to 50 W. In the Fortis laser, the SESAM is combined with a thin-disk laser to provide clean and transform-limited pulses, while the Duetto laser module incorporates a passively mode-locked seed laser with a diode-pumped amplifier to deliver 12 ps pulses at 1064 nm with a repetition rate of between 50 kHz and 8 MHz.
Just as the curtain was about to fall on LASER 2007, I found what gets my vote for the most interactive exhibit of the show. Michelson Diagnostics, a UK-based start-up founded in early 2006, was demonstrating its benchtop optical coherence tomography (OCT) scanner and displaying real-time sub-surface images of everything from strawberries to the fingerprints of anyone who stopped at the booth (including me).
OCT works by focusing laser light onto a tissue surface and using an interferometer to mix the reflected light from below the surface with the original light source. The interferometer only detects light that has not been scattered and builds up a picture of the structures below the surface. OCT works to a depth of around 2 mm, after which all returning light will have been scattered at least once.
Gordon McKenzie, the company's applications director, talked me through some of the key features of the turnkey EX-1301 OCT microscope. “We use a swept laser source that continuously scans through a wavelength range from 1260 to 1360 nm,” he said. “We scan at 10 kHz and this gives an axial optical resolution of less than 10 microns (in tissue) and a lateral optical resolution of 10 microns.”
The company's key strength is in the design of the Michelson interferometer. It projects laser light to four different depths to build up the sub-surface image. The images that are displayed on the screen are raw images that have not been processed or enhanced in any way.
McKenzie told me that the company is working with two hospitals in the UK who are using prototype devices to study excised human cancer tissue. One of the hospitals is looking at cervical and oesophageal cancer tissue while the second is concentrating on skin, lung and oral cancers.
And now to the fun bit — seeing a cross-section of your fingerprint. After looking at my middle finger, McKenzie told me that I have “the most worn fingerprint of anyone we've ever scanned”.
I've attached my fingerprint image and a “typical” image to this post so you can make your own mind up. You can see the top epidermal layer and the spiral structures are sweat glands. Also note that the top of surface of my finger is decidedly flat compared with the ridges of typical fingerprint. Must be all this blogging from LASER!
A spectrometer mounted at the top of a tower in a Portuguese forest is helping to spot forest fires before they take hold. In Hall B2 at Laser 2007, Klaas Otten of Avantes showed me the company's Forest Fire Finder, a self-contained detector and tracking system which removes the need for constant human observation.
The device consists of an Avaspec-2048-USB2 spectrometer attached to a video camera and a telescope, mounted alongside a control unit, a communications system and weather monitoring apparatus. The telescope and camera constantly scan 320 degrees of the horizon while the spectrometer analyses the light from the telescope, collecting spectra from up to 15 kilometers away. When it detects the smoke from a fire, the communication system sends an alert to the local operations center by SMS, GSM and over the internet, telling them the location and the weather conditions. It even transmits images of the fire, so the fire fighters know what awaits them when they arrive.
The spectrometer employed is a standard Avaspec machine, and there's nothing revolutionary about using it to detect atmospheric smoke and fumes, but the complete stand-alone system employed in Portugal is a novel implementation which has been well received by the local authorities. With little modification the system could be installed in other forested areas around the world, allowing a relatively simple laser system to play a big part in saving lives and protecting property.
When it came to deciding on a name for Modulight's new range of 635 nm high-power laser diodes, applications engineer Matei Rusu told me that the decision was easy: “They are red, they are hot and so it had to be ChiliLase.”
The 635 nm ChiliLase diodes emit 4 W from a CS-mounted bar or 3 W from a fiber-pigtailed module. “There are 19 emitters in the bar,” said Rusu. “We grow these by MOCVD at our facility in Tampere in Finland and they emit directly at 635 nm. There is no frequency doubling involved.”
Modulight couples the emission from each individual emitter into a fiber and then uses its optical expertise to couple the array of fibers into a single 200 micron core fiber.
For both the 4 W bar and the 3 W pigtailed module, Modulight quotes an operating current of 10 A and an operating voltage of 2.5 V.
Rusu hopes that the diodes will find medical applications, such as photodynamic therapy to treat skin cancers. Here, the module would be used to activate a light-sensitive compound that preferentially accumulates in cancer cells.
Modulight was founded in 2000 and its mission is to “add value to optical applications”. Business at the firm is flourishing: the company posted record revenues in 2006 and sales have grown for the third year in a row. In 2006, it also secured a contract from the US security market to supply lasers for perimeter monitoring.
A new addition to the Coherent booth is the Nuvonyx portfolio of high-power laser diode systems for industrial materials processing. On show was the first in the new range of HighLight direct-diode products, a 4 kW direct-diode system that can be used for surface cladding, heat treatment and welding applications.
John Haake, who originally worked for Nuvonyx and is now Coherent's director for applications engineering and product management, stressed the importance of the acquisition for both businesses. “You need vertical integration to succeed in the laser diode market,” he said. “Coherent has a lot of expertise in producing laser diodes with good beam quality, while we know how to put high-power laser diodes together to form a multi-kilowatt source.”
One key application for the 4 kW system lies in surface cladding, in which a material in powder form is applied to the surface of a metal part to provide it with particular functional properties, such as improved wear resistance. The system, which incorporates an array of 808 nm laser bars and micro-optics technology to shape the beam output, can form a cladding layer with a width of about 10 mm at speed of about 0.5 m per minute, depending on the demand of the application. That means that about 3 kg of powder material can be applied every hour.
According to Haake, using lasers for such large-area surface cladding applications delivers equal, if not better, performance than conventional techniques such as TIG (tungsten inert gas) and plasma welding, but can be much quicker because only a single pass is required to produce the cladding layer. In contrast, conventional arc-welding processes nearly always require multiple passes to achieve a cladding layer with the required material properties.
Matthias Schulze, Coherent's technical marketing director, says that the Nuvonyx business will shortly become integrated into the organization as the company's direct-diode division. “Materials processing is a growth target for us,” he said. “Direct-diode applications offer excellent opportunities to replace traditional materials processing techniques with laser-based technology.”
Optics giant Carl Zeiss presented its prestigious research award at LASER today. In a ceremony rounded off with music from a woodwind trio, delegates saw Jun Ye from the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, pick up the award and a cheque for €25,000. Ye received the award “for his work on the application of femtosecond frequency combs”.
The award is presented every two years and is given to younger scientists for their achievements in basic optics research. “Research, development and innovation are very important to Carl Zeiss,” company CEO Dieter Kurz told the audience. “Carl Zeiss invests 11% of its annual revenues back into R&D.”
Ye is the tenth recipient of the award and is certainly in good company. Past winners include Eric Cornell and Ahmed Zewail, who have both gone on to receive a Nobel Prize, as well as microscopy expert Stefan Hell and blue laser/LED pioneer Shuji Nakamura.
This is the first time that Zeiss has chosen to present the award at LASER. According to Kurz, LASER is the ideal place as it attracts an international audience and showcases the achievements and innovations that see the optics industry maintaining strong and healthy growth.
Juergen Mlynek, a member of the Ernst Abbe Fund award committee, summed up Ye's achievements before presenting the award. “Ye's work on strontium atoms has significantly broadened the use of femtosecond frequency combs, particularly for atomic clocks,” said Mlynek. “This invaluable research will address scientific questions and at the same time find practical applications. This is also the spirit of Carl Zeiss.”
With so many companies entering the fiber-laser market at Laser 2007, established fiber-laser manufacturers could be forgiven for lamenting the loss of the near-monopoly status they once enjoyed. Not so David Parker, CEO of the UK's SPI Lasers, who believes that increased competition in the fiber-laser space will open up new applications and drive future growth.
Not that SPI Lasers is standing still. At Laser 2007 the company is introducing its first high-power fiber laser modules for use in OEM applications. Each module produces up to 400 W, but they can be stacked together to create much higher power outputs. “The module is extremely thin to allow full scalability from 400 W to a few kiloWatts,” Parker told optics.org. “We've taken our technology to create a building block for OEM manufacturers.”
According to Parker, fiber lasers now offer a more viable solution for industrial processing applications. “Fiber lasers were more costly than flash-lamp lasers, and potential purchasers were wary of the risk associated with adopting new technology,” he said. “Long-term reliability has now been demonstrated in the field, and CAPEX has also fallen.”
Parker acknowledges that fiber lasers are challenging and replacing traditional laser sources in some material processing applications, but points out that SPI's products are also being used in new applications that will expand the overall laser market. “Medical aesthetics as a market didn't exist before fiber lasers,” he said. “We can't predict what new applications we will find for our products over the next few years.”
Indeed, SPI has achieved much success in the medical market with its 10 W fiber-laser module, and has now introduced a 20 W module operating at 1565 nm that will increase the processing speed and open up new applications for the product. SPI is also launching a range of 100 W and 200 W water-cooled fiber lasers for micro materials processing, and is previewing two new 300 W products – due to be introduced early next year – that will be optimized for cutting and welding applications.
Two of Germany's biggest players in the lasers and optics market, Trumpf and Jenoptik, have established a joint venture. Today I caught up with Jens Bleher, managing director of Trumpf's Laser Technology business group, to find out some more details.
“Both parties will have an equal 50% share of the new company, which will be called JT Optical Engines,“ Bleher told me. “Establishing this joint venture will allow us to accelerate the development of optical engines for fiber lasers. The new company will be based in Jena, a strong optical knowledge base, and will initally have 20 members of staff.“
Bleher describes an optical engine as a fiber laser resonator. It comprises a fiber-optic assembly and the interfaces through which the pump beam enters and the final emitted beam leaves the cavity. It does not include a power supply or cooling, for example.
Research and development is still ongoing at this stage but the plan is to sell the optical engines to third parties and also back to the parent companies Trumpf and Jenoptik.
Trumpf has made it thoughts regarding fiber laser technology crystal clear at LASER this year: the focus is sub-kilowatt systems for precision cutting and welding. This thinking is mirrored in the initial plans of the joint venture. “The current priority is to expand the market for low-power fiber lasers (less than 1 kW),“ said Bleher.
This is not the first time that the companies have teamed up. As Bleher explains, the companies are already working together to develop high-power diode lasers. “Trumpf has held a 25.1 percent share of Jenoptik Laserdiode since 2001,“ he said.
On a final note, the joint venture still requires antitrust approval.
On show at the Fraunhofer IOF booth is a new vibration-compensated mini-projector that could be integrated into mobile hand-held devices. A spokesperson at its booth (B2 261) told me that that every mobile phone maker is interested in this technology, and Fraunhofer hopes that the device will be integrated into all mobile phones by 2010.
The mini-projector will allow a user to project images directly from their mobile phones, as well as from poratble hand-held projectors. The device could also be used as a head-up display in cars, and could be integrated into games consoles.
The prototype on display at the Fraunhofer's booth is a monochrome and full-colour projection system with 640x480 pixels, but the organization hopes to make 800x600 pixel displays in the near future. It incorporates an inertial measurement unit that detects and compensates for any small movements, which is particularly useful for hand-held devices.
The projector also houses an electronics system that converts a digital signal into an analogue signal. This signal is then projected by laser beams onto a 1 mm diameter deflecting mirror, which in turn projects the image in a TV-like scan. The mirror oscillates in two perpendicular directions at an angle ranging from -10 to + 10 degrees to produce the image.
This research was carried out in collaboration with Fraunhofer IOF and IPMS.
It's not often that five leading figures in the optics industry debate the key factors that will affect future growth in the photonics market &ndash at least not in public. But Laser 2007's CEO Round Table saw senior executives from TRUMPF, Osram, Qioptic, Liekki and Coherent offer their views on everything from consolidation in the industry to the skills shortage affecting the optical engineering sector.
First, the good news. All the panellists agreed that the photonics market is enjoying sustainable growth, although Qioptiq CEO Benoit Bazire questioned the 10% growth rate that has been forecast by some market analysts. Per Stenius, CEO of Finnish company Liekki, also cautioned that a buoyant market would attract increased competition and impose greater price pressures on manufacturers.
For more dramatic growth, Stenius stressed that costs must fall significantly to enable true mass-market adoption of laser technologies. Peter Leibinger, head of Trumpf's laser technologies and electronics division, agreed: “Lasers remain a niche market,” he said, “and it remains to be seen whether lasers will ever be anything but a niche market.”
One of the issues is the proliferation of laser technologies available on the market today. Coherent's CEO John Ambroseo said that customers “don't care what the technology is, as long as we offer the right technology with the right performance at the right price".
The panellists also agreed that the recent merger and acquisition activity is a good thing for the photonics sector. “Consolidation is needed to drive the industry,” said Stenius. “It attracts entrepreneurs to set up companies that they later hope to be bought.” Trumph's Leibinger agreed, saying that continuing consolidation will “open up niche areas for entrepreneurs to exploit”.
Finally, the panellists turned their attention to the skills shortage that is becoming a major problem for optical engineering firms in Europe and the US. Ambroseo put the problem bluntly: “We are not educating enough scientists and engineers to support our projected growth curve,” he said.
The solution? In the short term, companies are filling the shortfall with engineers from other countries, with eastern Europe identified as one potential source of well qualified recruits. Longer term, companies such as Trumpf and Osram have instigated programs to “sell” science and engineering as a future career for young children, and to encourage female students to enrol for university-level engineering courses.
One trend that's rapidly emerging from the show is that more and more companies are now offering fiber lasers for industrial applications. Today, for example, I spoke to Mark Greenwood, the technical director of GSI Group's Laser Division, who talked me through GSI's new fiber laser range.
GSI isn't a name that I would normally associate with fiber lasers but, according to Greenwood, it's an area that's complementary to the company's existing product lines, such as lamp-pumped laser sources. As with other companies making their debut in this field at LASER 2007, the applications in mind are precision cutting and welding.
“We have designed our JK FL range of fiber lasers from the ground up to give industrial laser users the optimum solution for their process,” said Greenwood.
The first products in the JK range emit average powers up to 200 W at a wavelength of 1085 nm. “We hope to scale this up to 500 W by the end of the year,” commented Greenwood. The range includes rack-mounted options, with integrated scanning heads, and OEM modules that come with a variety of beam delivery options. You can find GSI in hall B3, booth 431.
If you are in hall B3, it is also worth stopping by Trumpf's giant, two-storey white booth — you can't miss it. The product to look out for is the TruFiber300, a singlemode fiber laser emitting 300 W that's suited to, you guessed it, precision cutting and welding.
“Due to the separate layout of the laser module and the supply unit, the laser module can be easily integrated into any system,” said Jens Bleher, managing director of Trumpf Laser Technology. “The laser module and supply unit can be separated by 20 m and three lasers can be connected to one supply unit.”
One immediate question that springs to mind is “what about disc lasers?” Well, Trumpf is still manufacturing them, but specifically for power levels above 1 kW – where it believes that disc laser technology is the platform of choice. The major application at this output power is cutting in the automotive industry. Trumpf will continue to develop its disc laser technology, and indeed has some new products on its booth, but don't be surprised if you also see more Trumpf sub-kilowatt fiber lasers in the future.
The second day of the trade fair brought another opportunity to walk around the three massive exhibition halls in search of new companies, technologies and applications. With upwards of 1000 exhibitors, needless to say it wasn't long before I came across my first eye-opening product of the day.
Xiton Photonics of Germany is a spin-off from the Technical University of Kaiserlauten. Established in 2004, the company brands itself as an “expert in Q-switched solid-state lasers and nonlinear optics.” And looking at some of the products on offer, it's not hard to see why.
One of the most intriguing products was the XVL-5HG laser. This is a Q-switched vanadate-based laser emitting an average power of 100 mW at the fifth harmonic of 213 nm. The laser emits sub 7 ns pulses and, according to Thorsten Bauer from Xiton, has an M squared of less than 1.6 and spot size on the order of 1 micron. He added that the repetition rate can be varied between 0.1 and 30 kHz.
Xiton also makes computer-controlled Q-switched optical parametric generators, which emit continuously tunable radiation at a signal output wavelength from 1350 to 2000 nm and a corresponding idler from 5000 to 2300 nm. You can find Xiton in hall B1, booth 161.
Staying in hall B1, and just around the corner from Xiton at booth 311, Cobolt of Sweden is demonstrating a prototype 515 nm laser emitting 25 mW continuous wave. Elizabeth Illy of Cobolt told me that the company plans to turn the prototype into a commercially-available product by the end of the year. The product will be called the Cobolt Fandango and uses the company's well-established periodically-poled KTP frequency conversion technology.
“515 nm is the final missing link to a compact all-solid-state replacement of argon-ion lasers,” explained Illy. “These products are ideal for any fluorescence-based microscopy technique, confocal microscopy for example.”
Other products on the Cobolt booth include the Tango, a passively Q-switched DPSS laser that is now available in a hermetically-sealed package. Emitting at 1535 nm with a repetition rate of 3 kHz and a peak power in excess of 2 kW, Illy told me that the source was being targeted at laser range finding applications.
Some new innovations can have unexpected benefits, as I found out on the Qioptic booth today. On display is the “CellImager”, a prototype imaging solution that has been designed specifically for researchers who need to monitor the growth of stem cells. But Qioptic's Dennis Jones told me that visitors to the booth have identified a number of surprising applications for the compact imaging system.
“One person asked whether the system could be used to analyse the fat content in milk, while another wanted a portable instrument for monitoring pollen levels,” said Jones. “The device could also be used for colour analysis of paints and inks.”
The CellImager was originally developed for scientists growing stem cells for biochemical research. Once stem cells have grown for about 20 days, they become “confluent” &ndash which means that they start to develop the specific characteristics needed for different parts of the body.
Researchers need to harvest and freeze the stem cells once they reach this critical stage, since confluent stem cells can be engineered to achieve particular biological functions. However, identifying confluent stem cells typically requires an expert to perform hourly visual inspections with an optical microscope.
Instead, the Qioptic solution incorporates two CCD cameras and a scanning mechanism to image and analyse an array of stem-cell samples within 90 seconds. The compact device, which measures 180x130x130 mm and weighs 3 kg, is also easy to operate by less skilled staff. The final features are now being refined with input from end customers, but Jones believes that the device can be used in a number of other applications without the need for further customization.
• Qioptiq also announced that it has completed its acquisition of Linos, the Germany-based optical systems maker. The new group will be organized into three divisions: optical systems, defence and aerospace, and precision optics. "We can now offer our varied customer base a comprehensive portfolio of products and services in addition to a strong geographic presence," said Qioptic CEO Benoit Bazire.
A newcomer to the exhibition this year is EOS, which is demonstrating a range of fascinating products fabricated using its FORMIGA P100 laser-sintering system. On show at booth B3 646 is a set of dentures made by the company's laser system, as well as turbine blades and vehicle exhausts. According to a spokesperson from EOS, its list of customers includes Boeing, Toyota and Formula One.
EOS, which was founded in 1989, starts its fabrication process with a CAD design that is fed into the laser system software. The system then builds the plastic or metal product in a series of powder layers. In the case of plastics, a 30 W CO2 laser sourced from Synrad is used to solidify layers of 0.1 mm, while for metals one of IPG's fiber lasers is used to solidify layers of 0.02 mm. The machine can build up to a height of 580 mm in a matter of hours.
EOS currently has a strong presence in Europe with 400-500 machines in operation. The company is now hoping for similar success in the US, having installed 40 machines across the country since launching there three years ago.
Building a laser system robust enough to operate on the surface of Mars is challenging enough in itself. Designing it to survive the trip there is even tougher, as Fabien Ghez of Thales told me at Laser 2007.
Thales plan to put a laser on board a future Mars Rover, due to be launched within the next few years. The system will analyse rocks on the Martian surface from a distance, shining the laser onto them and assessing the light that's reflected. That will avoid the messy mechanics of robot arms, grabbing claws, crushing apparatus and wet chemical analysis that's always been involved in sampling planetary rocks in the past.
But the laser system will have to be a survivor. Fabien saíd that the design specs call for the apparatus to survive several hundred G, and among other demanding requirements must also survive the detonation of explosive charges. This seemingly odd requirement comes from another of the designers ideas: instead of unfurling gracefully from the body of the Rover driven by servos and gears, the Thales laser will be shot into operating position by explosive charges. To survive all that and then work flawlessly the laser will need to have been built to last, but Fabien is quietly confident. His catalogue of lab trials, drop tests and explosive dummy runs will undoubtedly be dramatic though.
“My crystal ball only looks four years ahead,” said Robert Martinsen of nLight, a semiconductor laser maker based in Vancouver, Canada, at this afternoon's Photonics Forum. But if Martinsen's prediction's are anything to go by, that will be long enough for companies like nLight to deliver substantial increases in the power and efficiency of laser diodes.
Take efficiency for start. According to Martinsen, semiconductor lasers operating at all the important pump wavelengths will see efficiency gains over the next four years. At 808 nm, for example, the efficiency of production devices will rise from 55% today to 72% in 2011, while in the 968-988 nm band efficiencies will increase from 67% to 80% over the same time period.
Martinsen says that such improvements in efficiency will reduce the amount of energy lost as heat, which will eliminate the need for active cooling using devices such as microchannel coolers. It will also help to increase the power output from laser diodes, with Martinsen predicting that the power output from 808 nm single emitters will increase from around 7 W today to 13 W in 2011. Progress will also be made at longer wavelengths, with 9xx emitters seeing a power boost from 11 W to 18 W over the next four years.
These improvements in performance will have two main consequences, said Martinsen. First, the power output from single emitters will be large enough for these high-reliability devices to be used in place of diode bars, in particular for high-brightness direct-diode applications. Second, it will help laser diode manufacturers to continue to reduce the crucial cost-per-Watt metric.
Further cost reductions are likely to come from improvements in production processes. “Manufacturers of gallium arsenide devices will introduce silicon-like process control,” said Martinsen. “The rapid reduction in the cost-per-Watt shows no sign of slowing down.”
• nLIGHT is also introducing its new Pearl platform for high-power fiber-coupled modules, which it says offers an overall electrical-to-optical efficiency of more than 50%. The architecture incorporates multiple single emitters into a single fiber core, and standard modules produce 50 W at 808 nm and 5 W at 639 nm. Samples at 88x and 9xx nm are also offered.
Configuring the single emitters in series enables low-current operation, with the 808 nm modules typically operating at 6 A and the 639 nm modules operating at 1.3 A.
While the large, glitzy booths of the major optics players dominate the show by their sheer scale, some of the smaller stands make heads turn just by the technologies on show. Take OptoSiC, for example, a German company that has been set up to open up new applications for optical elements made from silicon carbide (SiC). Taking pride of place on its booth was a large SiC mirror, just over a metre across, which was produced as a demonstrator for the 3.5 m mirror that is now being integrated into the Herschel Space Telescope.
“Silicon carbide is the ideal material for optical telescopes,” Stéphane Chaillot, OptoSiC's head of material engineering, told optics.org. “It is extremely stiff, offers excellent thermal stability, and can be polished using normal glass polishing techniques.”
The other key advantage – particularly for a space telescope – is that silicon carbide mirrors are much lighter than traditional glass versions. Indeed, the 3.5 m mirror for the Herschel telescope weighs just 315 kg, as compared with 1.5 tons for an equivalent mirror produced in glass.
As a consequence, Herschel will be the largest space telescope ever constructed (for comparison, Hubble's primary mirror measured 2.4 m across). The new telescope, which is due to be launched by the European Space Agency in 2008, will also be the first space observatory to cover the spectral range from the sub-millimeter to the far infrared.
The demonstrator on show at LASER was produced from two SiC pieces brazed together, but the 3.5 m mirror for the Herschel telescope had to be produced in 12 “petals” because existing SiC production methods cannot fabricate anything longer than 1.5 m. Grinding the front face of the mirror created a parabolic shape that was accurate to within 0.25 mm, and then the front surface was polished and coated with aluminium to provide a reflective surface.
OptoSiC now believes that the advantages of silicon carbide can be brought to bear in a range of other scientific applications. On show at the company's booth was a number of smaller optical elements that Chaillot says could be used in a number of laser applications.
Day one of the show and I have already seen two companies with fiber laser prototypes/technology demonstrators on their booths.
First up: Newport. In a move that takes it more into industrial manufacturing markets, Newport was demonstrating its new singlemode 100 and 200 W continuous wave (CW) fibre laser. Target applications include laser cutting, spot and seam welding of thin metal, and the bonding and welding of plastics.
A spokesperson on the stand added that the new lasers were also being pushed into photovoltaic manufacturing applications such as solar cell singulation, isolation, scribing, and structuring. The spokesperson added that more fiber-laser products were on the cards, potentially with higher powers.
Newport was also exhibiting its high-power picosecond Pantera laser, the first product launched by the firm's Fibre Laser Business Group. The Pantera includes a master oscillator power fiber amplifier with a mode-locked seed laser and frequency tripling to reach UV wavelengths. The end result is 12 W at a wavelength of 355 nm and a repetition rate of 80 MHz.
Second: JDSU. Capitalizing on its single-emitter diode laser know-how, JDSU was exhibiting a new air-cooled 10 W pulsed fiber-laser prototype. Emitting at 1 micron, the product is said to suit marking and material processing applications. A commercially-available version of this laser is expected by the beginning of 2008.
After a hard day split between listening to talks at the conference and walking the show floor, it was a welcome relief to walk past pco's booth five minutes from closing time. The German firm has rigged up a rather unusual experiment to showcase the high-speed imaging capabilities of its CMOS cameras.
I won't keep you in suspense any longer. The company has strapped a sausage (raw) and a loaf of bread (crusty white baguette) on to two blocks of wood with wheels on them and was pushing them against a wall. One of the company's CMOS cameras captured the crash-test data, which you could watch back on a laptop in slow motion. As seeing is believing, I thought I better take a picture of this to post to the blog as well!
Ever wondered what a sausage looks like when it rebounds from a wall, well, you can watch every intimate detail as pco's 1200.hs camera runs at 636 frames per second (fps) at a full resolution of 1280x1024 pixels. The frame rate reaches in excess of 1000 fps if you choose a region of interest. The camera also has a 10 bit dynamic range and exposure times ranging from 50 ns to 5s.
This really is an excellent (and fun) demonstration of the capabilities of high-speed CMOS. You can see it for yourself in hall 2 booth 700. And just out of interest, I thought the sausage was the best crash test dummy.
The LASER exhibition was in full swing right from the word go this morning. One of the first sights to greet visitors is the joint CVI Melles Griot booth, going under the banner “two leaders, one company”. As this is the first time that the two companies have made such a joint appearance since the plans of the acquisition were announced last month, I went along to the booth to find out how things were progressing.
The first thing to stress is that the deal hasn't actually closed yet. I managed to speak to Stuart Schoenmann, CVI's CEO, and he told me the deal was in its final stages and he was optimistic it would close within 30 days.
It was interesting to hear Schoenmann talk about why CVI decided to acquire Melles Griot. “For us, this really starts we when are developing our business strategy,” he said. “We try to analyse our capabilities and understand where the weaknesses and gaps in our portfolio are. We then make a list to see who could fill these gaps. The gaps could be products, geographical markets or market sectors such as biomedical.”
Schoenmann told me that Melles Griot had actually been on CVI's acquisition radar since 2005. One reason, and a crucial factor of CVI's acquisition strategy, is that the products are complementary and there is minimal overlap. As an indication, there are only a handful of pages in Melles Griot's door-stopping catalogue that overlap with existing CVI products. “We are really looking to bring something new to CVI when we make an acquisition,” said Schoenmann.
Another reason was the strong brand recognition that comes with the name Melles Griot, which Schoenmann hopes will become even stronger now that it is united with CVI.
“Melles Griot is active in different market segments to CVI, so the acquisition allows us to diversify,” he added. “Melles Griot is also a lot stronger in Europe than CVI. They have a unique presence in Japan, which is unusual for a US company. So it was more for the markets and geographical reach.”
On a parting note Schoenmann told me that there were more acquisitions on the cards very soon and the CVI would play “an active role in the consolidation of the industry.” Watch this space!
If you are at LASER and want to find out more about the capabilities of the new company, you can find CVI Melles Griot in Hall B1, stand 403.
A novel night-vision system based on near-infrared radiation depends on Oerlikon's NightVision filter, which can detect near-infrared radiation with an efficiency of 90%. The new system, which was developed in close collaboration with leading car lighting manufacturers, will enable car makers to improve safety standards under night-time travel conditions.
A new range of 635 nm laser modules featuring a "near end-of-life detection" facility to warn operators of their impending failure will make their debut at LASER 2007. Photonic Products, a UK-based optoelectronics device manufacturer and laser diode specialist, says that it developed the PM-NEOLD laser-diode modules after a request by a client, and is now making them generally available.
German company EdgeWave has pioneered the development of the INNOSLAB laser, a diode-pumped solid-state laser that delivers good beam quality as well as short pulse operation and high peak output power. These lasers can produce beam profiles ranging from a circular Gaussian beam to a two-dimensional "top hat" profile, and can be used in a range of industrial and scientific applications.
One of the innovations that Bookham will be presenting in Munich is a new laser-diode bar that produces light at 1060 nm, a part of the spectrum not usually addressed by semiconductor lasers. The company says that the new product, which will enter the commercial marketplace later this year, will compete directly with traditional Nd:YAG lasers.
Are you planning to set up a photonics-based research program in Europe? Then make sure you make time for the European Commission's information session on 18 June, where you will find out how photonics will be integrated into the 7th Framework Programme for pan-European research.
Small structures can often have a big impact, especially in fields related to lasers and optics. Micrometer-fine patterns in surfaces can often endow components with amazing properties: plastic dashboards, for example, can be made to look like leather; sharkskin ribs on an aircraft's fuselage reduce air resistance; while micro-recesses in implants improve connection with the bone.
At LASER 2007, the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT, Aachen, Germany, will present a new machine that uses laser ablation to burn microstructures into 3D free-form surfaces, and will show how the machine can produce a leather-look finish on a car dashboard.
Lissotschenko Mikrooptik (LIMO), based in Dortmund, Germany, has made its name by using high-precision micro-optics to shape the output beam from all types of lasers. The company has also integrated its microlens arrays into its own range of high-power laser diodes, which has enabled its latest prototype to deliver a power density of 5 MW/cm2 in a 25 µm spot.
Our last selection of exhibitors to be profiled before LASER 2007 throws its doors open range from Laser Quantum, which has been manufacturing diode-pumped solid-state laser sources for the past 10 years, to Metrolux, which develops systems for laser beam analysis and optical characterization.
This week's batch of exhibitors range from Hilger Crystals, a division of the giant Newport Corporation that produces synthetic detection and spectroscopy crystal materials, to the dedicated German laser-diode specialist Jenoptik Laserdiode.
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