Tunable Deep UV and VUV Solid-State Laser Source

Light Age, Inc.
Somerset, NJ

Light Age, Inc., Somerset, NJ, with co-funding from the NIST Advanced Technology Program, developed user-friendly, highly versatile lasers offering broad spectral coverage, precision control, high speed/high power operation, and employing only safe, robust solid-state materials. Among their capabilities, these lasers can function at any wavelength in the ultraviolet and vacuum ultraviolet spectral region. This is important for applications such as precision photolithography (used to manufacture higher-density computer chips). The lasers are also being used in new medical and dermatological applications (such as tattoo and permanent hair removal) and in atmospheric and physics research. To date this is the only technology able to map certain upper atmospheric parameters affecting weather and climate on a global scale. Recently, it has been used to measure fundamental physical constants and by NASA to study the Leonid meteor shower. Many other applications (e.g., pollutant monitoring, blood chemistry analysis, cancer treatment, fingerprint detection) are being developed or investigated. The ATP award helped Light Age boost revenues an average of 50 per cent per year since completing the project in 1993. In 1998, revenues from commercial systems based on this technology more than doubled to $6.4 million.

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Date created:April 1998
Last Update: April 23, 2003