25 years of innovative solutions on applied laser technology
Happy birthday, Bayerisches Laserzentrum
-German laser centers are known as the guarantors of technological knowledge exchange between science and economy. Especially in times of an intensive global competition, a fast transfer of latest scientific developments into application is crucial. On November 16, the Bayerisches Laserzentrum (blz) celebrated its 25th birthday with an anniversary event. Guests had the opportunity to inform themselves about the importance of photonic technologies as a key technology of the future as well as the latest research and development activities of the blz.
New potentials implicate new challenges
In the 1980ies, research and development of laser technology became more and more important. With the aim to pave the way from laboratory into production for this technology as fast as possible, laser centers were built as an application oriented interface in Germany – for example 1993 in Erlangen. Nowadays, light is established as a flexible production tool and the challenges for the use of laser technology changed. It is up to the laser centers to contemporary transfer the fast emerging new potentials from basic research into application.
Nobel Prize winning innovations from light
This year, the Nobel Prize committee awarded the U.S. scientist Arthur Ashkin as well as the French researcher Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland from Canada with the Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of the optical tweezers respectively for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses. The committee constituted that photonic technologies created totally new methods to observe and control the machinery of life. This award was not a fleeting star at all. In 2014, Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry were awarded for developments in the field of photonic technologies, already. Thus, new and thitherto unknown prospects for the use of photonic technologies were created, in a short time. Furthermore, novel laser beam sources open up promising new ways for laser material processing.
Bayerisches Laserzentrum, a reliabel partner
If you would like to control the „tool laser“, you need more than typical engineering skills. When using a laser, complex physical and chemical interactions as well as effects concerning materials technology come together and have to be understood. Furthermore, the increasing digitalisation of production raises new challenges for companies. For 25 years, the Bayerisches Laserzentrum has been supporting its partners not only in realising technically and economically appropriate solutions, but also in bringing new scientific achievements into application. Also in future, the blz will help users to open up the advantages of laser technology for their own production processes in an ideal way (10.01.19).