Visolas Wins CyberOne Award:

An independent expert jury distinguished the spin-off company founded by researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as the best commercialisation of research results in 2011. The organic laser "Visolas do" produces noise free and spectrally pure light. Amongst other things, this laser thus improves specimen analysis in the field of medicine.

This innovative laser technology has been developed by KIT scientists and the resultant spin-off company VISOLAS GmbH founded in May now offers its services to manufacturers in the field of spectroscopy as well as to branches of science and industry occupied with measuring and analysis. For its innovative approach the spin-off now received the special award of the Land Baden-Württemberg in the context of the High-tech Award CyberOne. Spectroscopy, that is, taking measurements by way of light of various wavelengths, requires coloured light, for instance in specimen analysis for medicine, science or in industrially practice. Light enables scientists to conduct fast measurements and to detect even the smallest traces of substances.

Cost-efficient and Well-designed

So far, the light required for analyses was filtered from a white source of light. However, this light features restrictions as regards its quality. Therefore, lasers play an important role, but the hitherto existing variants are very big, complex and difficult to handle and thus cannot be employed on a broad scale with economic efficiency. VISOLAS combines the flexibility of dye lasers with a cost-efficient and compact design: The new organic solid state lasers use an optical grid by way of a resonator and can be produced in a few process steps only. They create noise-free and spectrally pure light, which considerably improves the quality of spectroscopic measurements.

Another advantage of this technology is that any colour in the visible spectrum can be produced with an easy-to-handle and compact device. Furthermore, the cost for this kind of laser is far below the cost for dye laser devices. To achieve this, the enterprise uses innovative technology on polymer basis. The laser chip platform they have developed can create the visible wavelengths required for an analysis quickly, continuously variable and with very little effort.

The VISOLAS GmbH originated as a spin-off from out of a close cooperation between the Light Technology Institute (LTI) and the Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT) at the KIT. The team is comprised of the three company founders Peter Greiner, Thomas Woggon, Johannes Barth as well as Stefan Hengsbach and is scientifically supported by the co-founders Professor Uli Lemmer, Head of the LTI, and Dr Timo Mappes from the IMT. The young enterprise intends to market organic solid state lasers for the first time ever in form of autonomous devices providing laser light for analysis technology (spectroscopy), that is freely adjustable as regards its frequency (colour).

More information:

Video: www.helmholtz.de/visolas-cyberone-preis

Website: www.visolas.de

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