EU backs new research on lasers

The EU has contributed €3.1m to a project concerned with developing ultra short pulse disk lasers for industrial materials processing applications.

The TISA TD (Ultrafast High-Average Power Ti:Sapphire Thin-Disk Oscillators and Amplifiers) project focuses on ultra short pulse (shorter than a tenth of a billionth of a second) Ti:Sapphire lasers. It was launched in December 2013 and is led by the Institute for Laser Tools (IFSW) at Stuttgart University, Germany. The project will run until December 2016.

Professor Thomas Graf, head of the IFSW, said: “Along with the very interesting scientific challenges, the development of new ultra short pulse disk lasers with a high midrange power is also of great scientific interest with a view to the increase in productivity with the laser-based material processing.”

Currently, most of the powerful industrial ultrafast laser sources operate in the picosecond range, which is sufficient for precision micromachining of metals. Yet to achieve optimum precision on transparent materials, such as the glass and ceramics widely used in smartphones and tablets, pulse durations on the order of 100 fs are required.

The TISA TD consortium will seek to develop ultrafast, high-average power Ti:Sapphire thin-disc oscillators and amplifiers. It is hoped that this will allow for optimum precision and ‘unprecedented’ productivity in micro-machining of transparent materials, such as glass and ceramics.

Industry partners include Thales Optronique and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, and Element Six, Oxford Lasers and M-Squared Lasers based in the UK .