Laserati

The ultrafast laser market will reach about $260 million in 2008, with healthy growth expected through to 2012 according to analyst Strategies Unlimited.

I have noticed in previous laser conferences that there are more and more companies producing on ultrafast fiber lasers. A recent report by Strategies Unlimited is on this topic. The report is not freely available. But we can know something from this interview from optics.org. The interview article is free, but you have to register. Following is the part that is most interesting to me.

How does the ultrafast market sustain such a large number of players?

There are now 38 companies offering an ultrafast laser product. In my opinion, that's a bit too many, especially when you consider that Coherent and Newport have the dominant market shares today. It is a lot more than I expected when we started looking into this project, but a lot of companies survive by serving a niche and with very tight financing. Many of them do this by offering ultrafast as an extension of their other pulsed laser products. What is surprising is how many of these little companies have been around for many years. Only a very few can be considered start-up companies entirely focused on ultrafast.

Do you expect to see new entrants and what do they have to do to survive?

When it comes to the laser business, you always see new entrants, but the venture-funded start-up is a very tough way to go, because the application development is so slow. The supplier must find a customer to design the laser into a system, and then the system has to be sold to end users. In between, there may be regulatory hurdles and extensive qualifications. It's easier to do if the laser supplier has a tight budget, lots of patience and maybe some other products already selling.

Do you expect to see any consolidation?

"Consolidation" is not the word that comes to my mind, at least not in the sense of a significant reduction in the number of suppliers. There are no strong economies of scale in the ultrafast business that would force that. The intellectual property is critical, though, so there certainly will be some licensing and even acquisitions to get access to that. I don't consider that consolidation - that is just the usual business of horse trading.

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Sharp Corp had a meeting on technologies relating to blue-violet and red semiconductor laser diodes. It explained the market conditions and the output growth as well as its efforts to enhance the laser power and reduce the module size.

via: Tech-On

The company forecast that 22 million low-power blue-violet diodes will be sold globally in 2008. Also, it estimates that the sales of high-power blue-violet diodes will reach 2.2 million units as the market for Blu-ray compatible products started to rise from the 2007 Christmas season. Annual sales of low-power and high-power products are expected to exceed 100 million units in 2010 and 2012, respectively.

Moreover, Sharp unveiled its plans to release a 350mW class blue-violet diode product in the later half of 2009 and a 400mW class product by around 2010.

LASER World of PHOTONICS CHINA 2008 will be held on 18 to 20 of March. More than 200 exhibitors will present their products and applications on 11,500 sqm of floor space at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC). More than 10,000 visitors are expected to attend the show.

Arasor acquired US-based Novalux through US$7 million as part of a joint venture with ZTE Corporation, China's largest telecommunications and networking provider, to commercialise laser chip technology for use in TVs, projectors, and smaller screens such as laptop, PDA and mobile phone. via: SmartHouse

January 2008 issue of Nature Photonics has a technology focus on fiber lasers. Some recent research highlights are presented, like report of millijoule femtosecond fiber laser from Jena University. Several people from companies (SPI Lasers, IPG Photonics, Koheras) are invited to write their perspective on fiber lasers. Prof. Andreas Tuennermann, head of the Fraunhofer Insititute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Jena, Germany, is interviewed on developments of fiber laser and his views on its future.

Among all the highlights, I think ultrashort pulse fiber laser is the center of spotlight. It seems suddenly, lot of companies emerge competing on femtosecond fiber lasers. Just point a few of them: IMRA, MenloSystem, Koheras, Toptica, Fianium, and FEMTO Lasers, etc.

Following is the Editorial of this Technology Focus:

ROFIN-SINAR Acquires Nufern according to this press release. It is quite a surprise to me. I use Nufern's fibers a lot.

www.strategies-u.com - Fiber laser sales are on track to pass $240 million this year, a
growth of 39% over 2006, with robust growth continuing through 2011 at
a rate of 26%, which will more than double the 2007 sales value. The
industrial laser market in which fiber lasers play will grow at nearly
10% per year over the same period. This is one of the conclusions of a
new report from Strategies Unlimited, the leading market research firm
covering optoelectronics markets. It should be good news to the nearly
40 suppliers of fiber lasers, as well as to the many suppliers of gain
blocks and laser components.

While much of the gain of fiber lasers come at the expense of
suppliers of solid-state lasers, suppliers of the other laser types
will see steady growth as well, amounting to about 7% per year through
the period. The strongest gains for fiber lasers will be in high-power
metals processing and in micro materials processing, a diverse set of
mid-power and pulsed applications.

This year several prominent laser suppliers announced fiber laser
products, including GSI, Newport, Rofin-Sinar, and Trumpf. These
announcements add credibility to the new technology, which is currently
dominated in the market by IPG Photonics. Discussions have now moved
from open skepticism to more nuanced specifics. Many key questions
remain, however. In particular, how fast and how much market share can
kilowatt fiber lasers gain from carbon dioxide lasers in sheet metal
cutting? And, how much vertical integration is necessary to succeed in
the fiber laser market?

Absorption and scattering properties of dense ensembles of nonspherical particles - Jean-Claude Auger, Vincent Martinez, Brian Stout
The purpose of this work is to show that an appropriate multiple T-matrix formalism can be useful in performing qualitative studies of the optical properties of colloidal systems composed of nonspherical objects (despite limitations concerning nonspherical particle packing densities). In this work ... [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 24, 3508-3516 (2007)] [Journal of the Optical Society of America A]

Fastest growing diode laser company will expand product offering with leading fiber products from LIEKKI

Vancouver, WA, USA/Lohja, Finland October 8, 2007— nLIGHT Corporation, a leading manufacturer of high power
semiconductor lasers today announced the signing of a definitive
agreement to acquire leading specialty fiber manufacturer LIEKKI
Corporation, based in Lohja, Finland. Further terms of the acquisition
were not disclosed.

“This is a very important acquisition that integrates critical
technology for the rapidly expanding markets for diode and fiber
lasers,” stated Scott Keeney, nLIGHT’s President and CEO. “Combining
the nLIGHT and LIEKKI product portfolios will bring compelling
solutions to our industry. We highly value the LIEKKI team and their
operational excellence. Our plan is to invest in the Lohja, Finland
operation as our fiber center of excellence.”

“The combination of our technology and teams will provide customers
with a complete supply chain from laser diodes and fibers to optical
modules,” commented William Willson, Managing Director of the Fiber
Division. “nLIGHT is the fastest-growing company in the diode laser
market and LIEKKI will bring its experience in fibers and modules, a
unique, patented Direct Nanoparticle Deposition (DND) fiber technology
process and a specialized manufacturing facility which scales
efficiently in this growing market.”

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2007.


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