Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis winners 2018 announced

24 Jul 2018

€100,000 in prizes for novel laser developments will be distributed at ceremony at Trumpf HQ in September.

First Prize was awarded for Extreme High-speed Laser Material Deposition.

Germany’s Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis and Zukunftspreis awards for scientific innovation and research into laser technology have been announced.

Both prizes are presented every two years by the Berthold Leibinger Foundation at an awards ceremony, an established event and meeting place of the large laser community encompassing users and researchers, as well as representatives of industry, politics, and society.

After a day of presentations by the finalists on July 13th, the jury voted on the prize winners for the tenth edition of the Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis. Going forward, on September 21, 2018, a total prize pot of €100,000 will be shared between a range of laser R&D innovators, as follows:

First Prize for Extreme High-speed Laser Material Deposition – EHLA is awarded to Thomas Schopphoven, Dr. Andres Gasser and Gerhard Maria Backes at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, Aachen and chair for Digital Additive Production at RWTH Aachen.

EHLA, as optics.org reported last year, is a new, highly productive variant of laser material deposition. It eliminates coating processes' shortcomings, in particular hard chrome plating and thermal spraying, providing an eco-friendly and economical alternative. This process also has great potential in the rapidly growing additive manufacturing market.

Second Prize for 3D Laser Lithography for Photonic Integration – DELPHI.

Second Prize for 3D Laser Lithography for Photonic Integration – DELPHI is awarded to the Project Group DELPHI (Prof. Dr. Christian Koos, Alois Hauk, Philipp-Immanuel Dietrich, Dr. Nicole Lindenmann, Andreas Hofmann, Tobias Hoose, Muhammad Rodlin Billah, Matthias Blaicher).

The team work at at the Institute of Microstructure Technology and Institute of Photonics & Quantum Electronics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Vanguard Photonics, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, and the Institute for Automation & Applied Informatics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.

The DELPHI project, headed by Prof Koos, is dedicated to industrial adoption of femtosecond laser lithography as a tool for 3D additive nanofabrication in integrated photonics. The concept of multi-photon polymerization is exploited to fabricate single-mode photonic waveguides and free-form micro-optical elements for efficient coupling of optical chips.

Third Prize for Faster Assessment of Resistances – RamanBioAssay was awarded to Prof. Dr. Jürgen Popp and Prof. Dr. Ute Neugebauer at Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, Jena, Institute of Physical Chemistry , Friedrich Schiller University and Biophotonics Diagnostics, both Jena, and the Center for Sepsis Control & Care, at Jena University Hospital, Germany.

RamanBioAssay is a laser-based method for a rapid identification of bacteria together with the characterization of their phenotypical resistance to antibiotics in less than four hours. The laser light is used to excite Raman spectra containing important fingerprint information about the identity and resistance patterns of the bacterial pathogen.

Third Prize for Faster Assessment of Resistances – RamanBioAssay.

The presentation of the awards to the prize winners traditionally takes place at a grand award ceremony at the headquarters of Trumpf Group in Ditzingen, Germany. As of 2018 the Leibinger laser prizes award ceremony always take place the third Friday of September, every alternate year.

Diploma and sculpture winners

The following finalists received a diploma and sculpture at the jury session:

Professor Dr. Arie Zigler, Hebrew University, Jersalem and HIL Applied Medical, Jerusalem, Israel, for:

Cancer therapy The approach of producing fast protons by the interaction of high intensity short laser pulses with so-called “snow” targets is a promising development towards ultra-compact, cost-effective, and affordable ion accelerator systems for various applications including production of radioactive isotopes, neutron production radiography, fusion, and various forms of radiation therapy.

Project Group SYLOS1 (Rimantas Budriūnas, Dr. Tomas Stanislauskas, Dr. Jonas Adamonis, Dr. Aidas Aleknavičius, Dr. Gediminas Veitas, Darius Gadonas, Stanislovas Balickas, Dr. Andrejus Michailovas, Dr. Arūnas Varanavičius), Vilnius University Laser Research Center, Light Conversion (MGF Šviesos konversija, UAB), Vilnius, Ekspla, UAB, Vilnius, Institute of Physics, State research institute Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Vilnius, for:

ELI-ALPS SYLOS1 Laser System A laser system for the Extreme Light Infrastructure ELI-ALPS to enable next generation experiments in attosecond science: High peak and average power cascaded optical parametric chirped pulse amplification system driven by diode-pumped lasers. It achieves more than 53 W average power combined with 5.5 TW peak power and sub-9 fs pulse duration.

Prof. Dr. Ji-Cheng Zhao and Prof. Dr. David G. Cahill, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. for:

The Tenth Berthold Leibinger Innovationspreis Prize Winners.

Ultrafast Laser Materials Property Microscopy Materials property microscopy can be applied to almost any material and accelerates experimental measurements of several key materials properties by integrating laser pump-probe time-domain thermoreflectance measurements with high-precision modeling of ultrafast laser induced thermophysical responses at both micron-scale spatial resolution and femtosecond temporal resolution.

Dr. Murielle Ferraye, Lise Pape, Prof. Dr. Bastiaan R. Bloem and Prof. Dr. Bettina Debû, Department of Neurology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmagen, University of Twente, Enschede, Walk with Path Ltd., London, Grenoble Institute of Neuroscience, Université Grenoble Alpes, La Tronche, for:

Laser shoes Freezing of gait is a severe symptom of Parkinson’s Disease. Patients experience this as if their feet remain glued to the floor. By consciously looking at visual information on the floor, such as objects or lines and stepping over them, they are able to overcome their blockages during walking. The laser shoes translate this observation into a unique ambulatory visual cueing device.

Dr. Ralf Preu and Dr. Jan-Frederik Nekarda, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg, for:

Laser Fired Contact for More Efficient Solar Cells The laser fired contact technology presented for the first time an industrial feasible way for the mass-production of the more efficient PERC solar cell concept. Over ten years, the process has been developed in close collaboration with leading companies for industrial maturity until successfully used in the world's first mass production, eventually establishing a new solar cell industry standard.