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Impact: Economic gains / altered business practices.
Research on ultrafast lasers has led to the development of new products and services and has been pivotal in the development of a whole field of new technology.
Significance: The research underpins the product development of a range of world leading companies including Femtolasers, Newport Spectra-Physics and Menlo Systems.
Reach: The companies that use the technology represent all of the leading players in the solid-state femtosecond laser field, a marketplace worth more than $250M annually.
Beneficiaries: The impact presents economic gains to the companies involved and underlies many applications in e.g. biology and medicine, providing significant benefits to the public at large.
Attribution: The research was performed by Professor Sibbett's group.
Research at the University of Manchester on laser cleaning of Ti alloys has resulted in practical implementation of the technology at Rolls-Royce for the automatic preparation of surfaces prior to electron beam welding. This has been applied to 24 different aero-engine component types including compressor drums across most current engine families. This has resulted in close to 100% `first time right' aero-engine component welds. The technology is also being adopted by BAE Systems to replace chemical cleaning during airframe manufacture. The elimination of manual and chemical cleaning processes results in savings of several million pounds per annum.
Laser cleaning is now a standard technique of great value in the conservation process to which research conducted at Loughborough University made a significant contribution. This work played a major part in introducing laser cleaning to conservators across Europe and further afield and was instrumental to the preservation and restoration of world heritage sites such as the Acropolis at Athens and important works of art including pieces by Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein. In addition to the cultural impact, the availability of laser cleaning techniques has: improved public services and understanding of, and engagement with, the conservation process (live restoration of artefacts); improved health (of restoration workers); influenced conservation practitioners (through an enhanced skill-set).
Midaz Lasers Ltd is a spin-out laser company formed by academic founders, Professor Michael Damzen (Director and Chief Technology Officer, CTO) and Dr Ara Minassian (Chief Scientific Officer, CSO), in 2006 as the vehicle for commercial exploitation of patented laser technology [4] arising from Prof Damzen's research group in the Physics Department at Imperial College London.
Midaz has designed and assembled multiple engineered laser and amplifier products, incorporating this patented technology, and has sold units to industrial customers in Europe, N. America and Asia since 2010. The primary market and beneficiary for Midaz laser technology is the industrial laser manufacturing sector and the benefit of the technology is to create laser industrial tools for higher throughput and lower cost manufacturing, including in the semiconductor industry for production of consumer electronics. In July 2012, Midaz was successfully sold to world-leading laser company, Coherent Lasers Ltd, for $3.8 Million.
This is an example of early economic impact where research on various aspects of laser engineering has resulted in the development of inexpensive, compact, efficient and user-friendly laser sources. An example is the incorporation of quantum dot structures into semiconductor laser architectures, with these replacing much larger and more expensive systems, with a range of applications in areas such as microscopy, biomedical diagnosis and therapy. This work has led to the generation of key know-how and patents that have been subsequently licensed as well as resulting in a variety of laser-related products being brought to market. Additionally, it has resulted in extra staff being employed at one of our partner companies.
Research in solid state lasers and non-linear optics in the Department of Physics has led to the creation of innovative laser companies in Glasgow serving global scientific and industrial markets. World-leading products have opened up applications in biomedical imaging, security, defence, pollution monitoring, material processing and fundamental spectroscopy. The companies Coherent Scotland Ltd and M Squared Lasers Ltd can trace a direct link to the research in the Department of Physics and are the central theme of this case study. Since 2008, these two companies have created an estimated 600 person years of employment and £135M of sales from products underpinned by research undertaken at Strathclyde. The wider cluster of companies, researching, designing and developing laser products, including Thales Optronics and more recently the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics, which has a close working relationship with the University, has made Glasgow one of the leading European centres for innovative laser manufacture.
Commercialisation of high optical quality diamond by Element Six Ltd (2010 on) and of diamond- enabled lasers by M Squared Lasers Ltd (2012 on) has been made possible by underpinning research on laser engineering and optical characterisation at the University of Strathclyde. [text removed for publication] Markets for this material include thermal management of lasers to enable higher powers and high-performance laser output windows. [text removed for publication]
Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) locking, developed into a practical technique by researchers at the University of Glasgow, is the ubiquitous method for the precise frequency control of stable laser systems. This control is central to laser products from companies such as Toptica and Newport, and has an estimated global annual market in excess of £5M. The PDH stabilisation technique is essential for the operation of the time standards maintained in all of the world's Governmental Metrological Standards Laboratories (e.g. NPL, NIST, BIPM) and finds applications in inspection tools in the semiconductor industry and deep UV lasers for UV-Raman spectroscopy.
The development of a high average power, all-fibre integrated, supercontinuum (or "white light") source, has led to a completely new product that has had significant commercial impact on the fibre laser and applications market place. The basic science, the technologically important power scaling and all-fibre integration were undertaken and first demonstrated by Imperial College staff. This device is currently sold as a compact free standing device by companies such as Fianium, NKT Photonics and IPG Photonics. Sales of supercontinuum lasers at Fianium alone have greatly exceeded £10M. The device has also been successfully incorporated into spectroscopic and medical imaging instrumentation generating new business activity through this disruptive technological change.
High power fibre laser research undertaken at the University of Southampton has led to the creation of a new business sector in the generation of highly efficient and highly practical fibre laser technology. This has revolutionised areas of industrial material processing and enabled the development of specialist components for high-end industries (such as aviation and defence) as well as an array of new medical devices, procedures and manufacturing technologies. The research is also directly responsible for the commercial success and sustained growth of a spin-out company, SPI Lasers Ltd, which has an annual turnover of over £40 million and employs more than 250 people in the Southampton area.