Brighter lasers

Scientists and engineers across Europe have joined forces in a collaborative effort to develop a new generation of high-brightness lasers.

The €16.25m (with €9.7m of European Commission funding) project called WWW.BRIGHTER.EU, which runs until September 2009, has brought 22 of Europe's top research teams together from industry, research laboratories and academic institutions to make lasers smaller, brighter, more efficient, and cheaper.

The project name stands for 'World Wide Welfare: High-Brightness Semiconductor Lasers for Generic Use', and brings together partners from ten European countries. The WWW.BRIGHTER.EU collaboration builds upon the successful WWW.BRIGHT.EU project, which was completed in 2006.

The UK is represented in the BRIGHTER consortium by Nottingham University and Cambridge University.

The consortium aims to develop low-cost, high-brightness light sources for an extended range of colours (wavelengths) and to couple more light power into smaller diameter optical fibres. These improvements will, on one hand, allow the replacement of existing cumbersome and expensive laser sources, and on the other, create new markets for the devices.