EKSPLA

Our thoughts with Floridians – just hoping the nature slows down and lets the people rebuilt 💚 As they sure have amazing strength and resilience to carry on, and inspire us all! For instance, despite recent challenges, one of the largest manufacturing events, FABTECH Expo, is still going forward. Our electronics product manager, Artūras, is already there, and rest assured, all necessary safety precautions are in place to ensure his well-being! We wish everyone a great event – may it be a chance to connect, discover new partnerships, and, above all, let the show go on!

On October 14–18 Vilnius hosts the Baltic Photonics Light Science & Industry Days. The event, featuring participants from Lithuania, Taiwan, and the Baltic States, will delve into scientific advancements across photonics, laser technologies, and their applications, offering opportunities for networking and knowledge sharing. Thanks to Toolas - Laser Micromachining Cluster and the event partners Lithuanian Laser Association, Vilniaus universitetas / Vilnius University, Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC), Inovacijų agentūra, LithuaniaBIO, Research Council of Lithuania | Lietuvos mokslo taryba, and Visoriai Information Technology Park (VITP)! 👉 We arehappy to be part of this event, not only in discussions and sharing the good practices, but also as speakers. Meet our colleague Andrejus on the 17th at the Industrial Conference: Biotech, where he will be talking about #photoacoustics and the groundbreaking abilities it can offer in #diagnostics. It is the Case Studies Session at 2–3.50 p.m. See you soon!

Excited to be a part of this team thinking and workign light years ahead towards a sub-wavelength holographic lithography stepper for integrated circuit production! ⭐ Or HoLiSTEP – definitely check it out. Kudos to great partners: SWHL GmbH I Flexible Optical B.V. I Tampere University I AMPLICONYX OY I Mimotec SA I Capgemini Engineering I Modus Research and Innovation

💡 #Photodissociation, #photolysis, or photodecomposition is a chemical reaction in which a chemical compound is broken down by photons. It is defined as the interaction of one or more photons with one target molecule. Photolysis plays an important role in photosynthesis, during which it produces energy by splitting water molecules into gaseous oxygen and hydrogen ions. This part of photosynthesis occurs in the granum of a chloroplast where light is absorbed by chlorophyll. This reacts with water and splits the oxygen and hydrogen molecules apart. 👉 #Laser Flash Photolysis is a technique for studying transient chemical and biological species generated by the short intense light pulse from a nanosecond/picosecond/femtosecond pulsed laser source (pump pulse). This intense light pulse creates short lived photo-excited intermediates such as excited states, radicals and ions. All these intermediates are generated in concentrations large enough for chemical and physical interaction to occur and for direct observation of the associated temporally changing absorption characteristics. Typically, the absorption of light by the sample is recorded within short time intervals (by a so-called test or probe pulses) to monitor relaxation or reaction processes initiated by the pump pulse. Usage of Optical Parametric Oscillators (#OPO) opens new possibilities in #spectroscopic experiments.

You are in for a treat! 👇 An amazing group of scientists have just published an article exploring all the posibilities with the SYLOS series lasers at ELI ALPS Research Institute: 'Advancements in light engineering have led to the creation of pulsed laser sources capable of delivering high-repetition-rate, high-power few-cycle laser pulses across a wide spectral range, enabling exploration of many fascinating nonlinear processes occurring in all states of matter. High-harmonic generation, one such process, which converts the low-frequency photons of the driver laser field into soft x-rays, has revolutionized atomic, molecular, and optical physics, leading to progress in attosecond science and ultrafast optoelectronics. The Extreme Light Infrastructure, Attosecond Light Pulse Source (ELI ALPS) facility pioneers state-of-the-art tools for research in these areas. This paper outlines the design rationale, capabilities, and applications of plasma- and gas-based high-repetition-rate (1 kHz to 100 kHz) attosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) beamlines developed at ELI ALPS, highlighting their potential for advancing various research fields.' Reading this is like being a proud parent of a child going into the world and contributing to making it better 😊 The link to the article is the comments. Enjoy!

Ceramics are popular #dielectric materials known for their exceptional properties, including thermal conductivity, electrical insulation, mechanical strength, and resistance to corrosion and wear. However, conventional mechanical processing methods often require large forces, leading to crack formation and potential breakage of the substrate. Femtosecond lasers offer a solution for processing hard and brittle materials like ceramics, ensuring the highest quality and accuracy. The FemtoLux 30 was tested in the initial step of scribing ceramic materials – in forming grooves. A comprehensive study was conducted to investigate the scribing speeds and quality using 1030, 515, and 343 nm wavelengths. To estimate the influence of shorter wavelengths, 3 mm length and 50 μm deep grooves were formed on the sample surface. As a result, scribing speeds of 44.1 mm/s were achieved with the 1030 nm wavelength, and the heat-affected zone was reduced from 8.23 μm to 4.88 μm when using the 343 nm wavelength. Additionally, the required depth could be controlled by tuning the pulse energy, with demonstrated depths of 30, 50, and 70 μm. The picture is courtesy of Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC)

🌟 Tomorrow is World Teachers' Day – a beautiful occasion to celebrate and appreciate the power of knowledge, the inspiration to keep seeking more, and the people who gave us our first push toward great endeavors that make the world a better place. Thank you to all our teachers, whether in schools, universities, workplaces, peer projects, or other educational activities. 💚 A special thanks as well to our colleagues who inspire children at schools, mentor our team, give talks on the beauty of Photonics, and help solve everyday challenges: Jonas, Salvijus, Gytis, Vytautas, Andrejus, Aistis, Eglė, Mantas, Antanas, Lina, Donatas, Edvinas, Gabija... and so many more!

Next week, our EKSPLA USA team will be attending the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Plasma Physics in Atlanta. We invite you to stop by and chat with Linas about #scientific #lasers and how we can help equip your lab with the best tools available for your next big project. From October 7th to 11th – let's meet!

Turner Laser Systems is a trusted integrator for leading global #laser manufacturers and motion suppliers. Their team is relied upon across various fields, from #defense to the #semiconductor industry, for their unwavering commitment to flexibility, reliability, and precision. Given our shared commitment to the quality and state-of-the-art design, we were thrilled to provide Turner Laser Systems with our FemtoLux 30 laser source for their newest XL SCAN machine. FemtoLux 30 delivers 1030, 515 and 343 nm output wavelengths as well as #PoD feature – pulse on demand – enabling laser to fire a pulse only when required. The XL SCAN was developed in collaboration with SCANLAB GmbH, PI (Physik Instrumente) Group, and ACS Motion Control. 💚 In setups like this, high-throughput ultrafast laser processing truly reaches its full potential, with optimized motion ensuring maximum speed and precision. It is a great pleasure to see it in action! 

The International Conference on Laser Ablation (#COLA) is dedicated to laser #ablation and applications, being held from September 29 to October 4 in Crete. When it is a gathering of #laser scientists, end-users, students and industry professionals from around the world, we are there – come by our booth to chat. 🚀 We also come prepared with our own research! 👉 Deividas says, that ‘the dielectric materials possess excellent electrical resistivity, thermal stability, and chemical inertness, making them highly attractive for various applications. However, conventional processing methods struggle in processing these materials due to their high hardness and brittleness which in the end limits the achievable quality. As a solution, #femtosecond laser sources have proven to be excellent candidates for processing dielectric materials with high precision and quality. In order to adapt the technology to industrial levels, the process efficiency has to be considered and optimized. From the literature, one can observe that there exists an optimal fluence value at which the maximum material volume per energy is removed. However, nowadays we have laser sources that output pulses in hundreds of microjoules in energy, which exceeds the required energy to process the material multiple times. To bring the fluence values down to the optimal value, one can use GHz burst, which is closely packed sub-picosecond pulses varying in number from 2 to 1000 with repetition rate in the GHz range. With this feature, it is possible to split the high-energy single pulse into multiple ones, eventually reaching the optimal fluence and optimizing the micromachining process.’ 💚 In his study, our industrial femtosecond laser system FemtoLux 30 is utilized in machining #dielectric materials. By using the GHz burst option, which stands out by allowing the end user to change the number of pulses in the burst from 2 to 1000, various burst configurations are investigated and their influence on processing efficiency.