Lasers making lasers

This proposal falls under the Manufacturing with light call and addresses the area of Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) as a route to manufacturing high optical quality, fully single crystal lasing waveguides. PLD is an established technique for deposition of a range of materials, but few so far have used it to grow single crystal structures for application as thin-film lasers. This project is directed at this specific area, and has end goals of high power (>100W c.w.) lasing operation, from compact (< 1square cm) devices at laser wavelengths in the 1.0 - 2.0 micron region, as well as q-switched and mode-locked pulsed laser operation.

The second goal is to demonstrate the utility of these devices for applications across the range of laser-based manufacturing, including materials processing, and the life-sciences and medical areas in particular. We will engage with laser companies, the UK association of laser users and laser job shops to establish the optimum market for such devices and then work with all of these to seek a route to commercialisation of these products.

Given the short duration of the project, we will direct our effort to ensure the optimum device outcome (c.w. or pulsed operation) following the initial growth and characterisation phase, for maximum impact within the manufacturing sector.

Impact Summary

The main beneficiaries of the proposed research will be:
(1) materials' scientists (via our results on novel growth of laser-deposited thin films),
(2) the laser research community (from our lasing results)
(3) the UK (and beyond) laser-based manufacturing sector
(4) UK-based laser industry (two companies, M-Squared and Elforlight, are listed as exemplars)

In greater detail:

(1) The PLD community world-wide is interested in all such novel materials developments. To date, nobody (apart from us) has used PLD to grow films of thicknesses within the few microns to few tens of microns, so our results here will set a new benchmark of materials capability. Having been the editor of the Wiley text on Pulsed Laser deposition of thin films: applications-led growth of functional materials, I would anticipate a third text in this series, potentially addressing high quality PLD growth of optical materials.

(2) There is a thriving UK laser community and in the area of diode-pumped solid-state lasers Universities such as Southampton, St. Andrews, Strathclyde, Heriot Watt, Imperial College, and Manchester are all major international players. All these institutions also have major efforts in ultrafast lasers, while Southampton and St. Andrews lead in waveguide laser development. Our work will impact strongly upon this community through our publications, conference presentations and future collaboration.

(3) Laser manufacturers and system integrators will benefit from these low cost, reduced footprint and highly efficient lasers for laser-based processing, marking and cutting in the areas of manufacturing, medical, healthcare, and ideally other new industrial sectors, thereby establishing an extended customer base for laser systems. The UK is very well placed to exploit this opportunity as is already home to a large number of laser application developers and system integrators (e.g. OpTek, M-Solv, Spectrum Technologies and Laser Micromachining Ltd).

(4) We have given the names of two companies above, but there are other compnies in the UK, and many companies in the EU, and USA in particular who would be interested in just such a technology. Manufacturing is set to extend its reach in new high-technology areas and we fully expect this to be led by UK-based companies, (including a new spin-out from this proposal if our expectations are fulfilled.