Scotland-based photonics consortium gets £900,000 grant to develop miniaturized RGB laser sources
A £902,329 grant from Innovate UK has been awarded to a Scotland-based photonics consortium to develop novel optics for miniaturized red-green-blue (RGB) laser sources.
The consortium includes project lead, Optocap (Livingston, Scotland), an optical component integration and packaging company; PowerPhotonic (Fife, Scotland), an SME specializing in optical surface formation using wafer-scale laser micromachining, and Optoscribe (Livingston, Scotland), a company using ultrafast lasers to form structures and waveguides in glass. The fourth partner, research and technology organization Fraunhofer UK (Glasgow, Scotland), will develop the waveguide-writing process and build the project demonstrator.
A panel of experts at Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency, awarded the grant, judging the consortium's application as a compelling business case for miniaturized RGB sources, a concept that is technically novel, and has genuine potential to advance the state of the art and contribute to the UK's position as a world leader in this technology.
"This technology has many applications and will potentially open up a large number of breakthrough opportunities in future displays, augmented reality, optical communications, and medical applications," says Matthew Currie, applications engineering managing at PowerPhotonic. "The consortium is well-placed to deliver the project's outputs and take the technology towards commercial exploitation."
More info on the participants can be found at:
https://www.cap.fraunhofer.co.uk/
https://wpo-altertechnology.com/optocap/
Source: PowerPhotonic
John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.