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Covesion, a company that was spun out of the University of Southampton, focuses on research and development of high-value engineered nonlinear crystal materials, that find widespread use in the laser, defence and display sectors. The impacts of their work fall under the headings of economic, via job creation and investment, health, through application of their products in medical imaging, and the environment, via detection of airborne pollutants and remote sensing. The company is now a multi-million pound business that has attracted more than £1m in US investment and won UK export orders around the world. The global value of Covesion-enabled commerce since the company's inception in 2009 is estimated to be in excess of US$100m.
This research has led to the creation of new business sectors in laser development for medical and healthcare applications, which has enabled the creation of a world-wide market worth US$96 million in 2011, and a local spin-out, Fianium Ltd, which now has more than 50 employees and an annual turnover of around £10 million. Exploiting a radically new optical component invented at the University of Southampton, the microstructured optical fibre (MOF), this research has led to economic benefit through the creation of hundreds of jobs worldwide, and enabled the development of new diagnostic and medical technologies.
Ultra-precise Bragg grating writing-technology, invented in the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), has led to impacts in the areas of security, safety, detection of bio-hazards and the underpinning laser technology currently being pursued for clean energy generation for future energy security. This case study highlights two aspects of the technology namely: planar-based for optical microchip sensors in areas such as portable detection of biohazards, which has resulted in the spin-out Stratophase, and fibre-based, inside the US National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest laser system, based in California, built for fusion-energy research, which has ORC fabricated fibre Bragg gratings within its laser amplifier chains. These ultra-high precision laser-written engineered gratings have enabled important advances in biosecurity, management of environmental hazards and clean energy research.
Implementation of photonic quasi-crystals on light emitting diodes (LEDs) can produce more light using less energy. This technology was brought to the global market via the successful commercialisation of laboratory devices derived from research in nanophotonics and the subsequent development of photonic quasi-crystals by a multi-disciplinary team from the University of Southampton. The intellectual property of the technology was acquired and adopted in 2008 by Luxtaltek Corporation, a global manufacturer of LEDs. In the period 2008-2012 Luxtaltek Corporation, made total profits of £35 million utilising the photonic quasi-crystal LED technology, employing more than 300 people in its production facilities.
Researchers at the University of Southampton were the first in the world to introduce ytterbium-doped silica fibre as an optical gain medium. The work led to the creation of a new business sector around efficient industrial fibre lasers, which enable new manufacturing processes in the automotive, aviation, defence and medical device industries, with a reduction in carbon footprint relative to earlier technologies. The economic impact of this work includes the UK foothold in the $2 billion global industrial laser market through the success of two spin out companies — Fianium and SPI Lasers — with a combined turnover of £50 million, employing close to 300 people
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.
Researchers, and the work they undertook at the University of Exeter during the 1990s, led to the formation of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency's (now QinetiQ) first spinout company: ZBD Displays Ltd. Achieving revenue growth of 17,910% over the last five years, ZBD's unique electronic retail signage and shelf-edge labelling technology is used by major retailers all over the world. The invention used the know-how developed by ZBD's company founders whose R&D and engineering teams all include former postgraduates from the School of Physics and Astronomy, who acquired their expertise under the supervision of Professors Roy Sambles and Bill Barnes.
Research into distributed optical fibre sensing undertaken at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton has had profound economic and environmental impact within the oil and gas industries in both extraction efficiency from existing reservoirs and improved safety performance and operation of three companies: Optasense, Stingray Geophysical and Schlumberger. Each of these companies have established highly competitive positions in the worldwide optical sensor market and collectively employ more than 160 people in the south of England, in their distributed sensing programmes having benefitted from the adoption of this new technology that contributes to the management of environmental risks and hazards.
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.
Impact: Economic Based on research carried out within PHYESTA, a range of novel laser devices have been produced and sold under licence by M Squared Lasers Ltd Glasgow.
Significance: The products have significantly expanded the M Squared product range and have led to increased sales and new customer relationships.
Reach: M-Squared have marketed these lasers worldwide and has had major sales from customers in the defence and oil and gas sectors. New collaborations have been enabled with international partners including the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics (Glasgow).
Beneficiaries: M-Squared Lasers
Attribution: The devices were developed by PHYESTA Researcher Professor Malcolm Dunn's research group