The VISUAL project aims to strengthen the leadership of industrial UL manufacturing partners in the scientific, medical, and industrial application fields. This will be achieved through a novel design-to-cost approach and an innovative UL platform providing unprecedented technical versatility.
Medical and consumer electronics markets are driving an ever-growing demand for powerful, compact, high-quality, and cost-effective femtosecond (fs) sources. Examples of maturing processes where Ultrafast Lasers (UL) are key enablers include ophthalmic surgery and stent manufacturing in the medical field, as well as post-processing of OLED panels for defective pixels and machining of smartphones in the consumer electronic field. In the global scientific instrumentation market, non-linear multimodal optical microscopy (such as multiphoton absorption fluorescence or coherent Raman microscopy), high-energy photon coherent radiation via high harmonic generation processes, high-energy particle beam generation, and time-resolved dynamic charge transfer studies in materials are increasingly used in research laboratories. Such expanding business perspectives are fuelling worldwide competition for UL manufacturers.
The VISUAL project aims to strengthen the leadership of industrial UL manufacturing partners in the scientific, medical, and industrial application fields. This will be achieved through a novel design-to-cost approach and an innovative UL platform providing unprecedented technical versatility. This high-average-power platform will deliver ultrashort optical pulses with pulse-on-demand capability at very high repetition rates (60 MHz) and with extremely broad wavelength tuning ability. The numerous benefits of this platform, designed for multipurpose application cases, will be assessed within the framework of VISUAL. These assessments will include label-free bio-imaging and medical diagnosis, "on-chip" particle acceleration for electron-beam therapy, and advanced fiber and glass micro-structuring.