Quite a few companies demonstrated their new products and technologies at the recently concluded LASER World of Photonics. Chandragupta Amritkar reports from Munich.

The leading lights from industry and research met at the Laser World of Photonics 2011 as the event ended with a substantial increase of visitors from 80 countries and a new record of more 1,100 exhibitors and represented companies. This year, there was only one exhibitor from India - Sahajanand Laser Technology. Not only that, Dr Arvind Patel, MD, Sahajanand Laser Technology, was also a prominent speaker at the 10th International Laser Marketplace and he focused on Laser Materials Processing in India - Present Scenario and Future.

"It has been a great success for us. It was this show that motivated me to start Sahajanand Laser Technology. After visiting the show in 1990 and seeing great potential in India, I set up SLT in 1992. Since then I have made it a point to visit this show. This year we exhibited. The reason was two-fold: to find out good global partners for OEM, distribution and marketing; and to represent SLT on a global platform. Our aim was to use the show as a right platform towards our global vision to serve the international market with our Special Purpose Machines, industrial automation, quality and innovative software to show and encompass our technical expertise. I think to a certain extent we have achieved our goals," said Dr Patel.

Talking about the major focus areas and highlights this year, Ms Claudia Sixl, Exhibition Group director Laser World of Photonics, Messe M?nchen GmbH, said, "Laser World of Photonics has three main topics: Lasers and Laser Systems for Manufacturing, Biophotonics and Life Sciences, and Green Photonics. The focus is on all areas that have to do with energy and the environment, (i.e., increasing efficiency for photovoltaic production). Highlights are lightweight construction and electro-mobility that are presented in the special show "Photons in Production" and at the joint stands of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Also the application range of ultra-short pulsed laser as well as the field of biophotonic and medical engineering are the focus of this year's event."

The Laser World of Photonics is the laser and photonics industry's most international event. This statement is underpinned by the high proportion of 58 per cent of foreign exhibitors and 53 per cent of visitors. The leadership status is also reflected among the international guests: The top five visitor countries apart from Germany were France, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Switzerland, Japan, and the USA.

Laser World of Photonics is already in China but not in India. When queried on any plans to replicate it in India Sixl said, "Laser World of Photonics China is growing steadily and is the leading show in the Asian laser and photonics market. Definitely India has a good potential and I think India will get into the focus of the laser and photonics industry more and more in the coming years. But at the moment we don't have specific plans for a Laser show in India."

Interesting Products

When queried on the new technologies on display, Sixl said, "Our exhibitors bring a lot of new interesting products to the show. Therefore it is difficult to make a selection. To name only a few that are presented: a Hybrid system solution for material processing (by Erlas Erlanger Lasertechnik GmbH), Genuine three-dimensional marking (by Raylase), an ultra-thin microscope by Fraunhofer IOF. Fraunhofer and 3D Micromac present a new OLED illumination system, which is designed for advertising signs or background illumination of LCD displays. In the field of biohpotonics and medical technology JenLab shows a new laser tomography with which cell characteristics can be explored better. The Munich Center for Advanced Photonics presents a new laser techniques for tumor combat with ultra-thin transparent carbon films."

Some of the interesting products on display included Fraunhofer ILT 's E-mobility through lightweight alloy construction. Manufacturing components made of carbon fibre reinforced plastics in production vehicles to minimise weight remains a major manufacturing challenge. The institute uses a Tesla Roadster V2.5 to showcase new production techniques in automotive manufacturing. These entail applications such as the micro joining process for hybrid drives and welding techniques for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries. They also demonstrated their 1 kW femtosecond lasers. This is the first time that an fs-laser has achieved medium power in the kW range. The amplifier concept, based on Innoslab technology, was extended to Yb doped YAG as the active medium, which permits the amplification of ultra short pulses owing to the large bandwidth.

Hannover Laser Centre demonstrated a fibre laser system that optimises industrial micro material processing. An entirely fibre-based, picosecond laser system developed as part of the PULSAR (PUlsed Laser System with Adaptable Pulse PaRameters) research project achieves outstanding results in the microprocessing of brass and aluminium. A laser diode with a wavelength of 1.03 ?m and a pulse duration of approximately 40 psacts as the pulse source. 3D-Micromac AG displayed their laser micro processing. The micro STRUCT C TM laser micro processing system is being presented in a new design. The system is suitable for processing many different materials and layer systems, e.g., for applications in medical technology, the photovoltaic industry or even organic electronics. Thanks to the option of creating various machine configurations, the system can also be variably adapted to diverse requirements in both R&D and industrial applications.

Unlike conventional microscopes, the ultra-thin microscope consists of numerous side-by-side imaging channels each of which transmits one segment of the overall object generating seamlessly adjoining image segments. The imaging channels are made up of micro lens arrays with lens diameters of approximately 300 ?m. The system permits a spatial resolution of 5 ?m across an object field of 36 x 24 mm².

The first laser in the red spectral range in which VBG (Volume Bragg Gratings) has been used comes from PDLD. The VBG-stabilised multimode 647 nm laser diodes provide a drastic increase in accuracy when determining the C-H stretch in Raman spectroscopy. This makes them idea for analysing organic substances.

Laser structured strain gauges can be used for exact measurement of forces even at critical points, such as for highly stressed tooling machines or complex 3-D workpieces. Producing the sensor structures using ultrashort laser pulses is intended to make the production of high quality thin-film sensors economically attractive for small and middle sized batches as well.

Coherent's PowerMax