Another Award for Class 5 Photonics

Class 5 Photonics is the proud Gold Winner of the Laser Focus World Innovators Award 2018 in the laser category with its Supernova OPCPA product. The Laser Focus World Innovators award recognizes companies that have made major contributions to advancing the field of optics and photonics through recently launched products or services and is awarded yearly during the CLEO conference and tradeshow in San Jose, California.

The novel Laser systems from Class 5 Photonics are deployed worldwide in leading research laboratories. The Supernova OPCPA already received the PRISM AWARD in the category of Lasers in January of this year. This Laser system allows researchers to conduct experiments ten times faster.

CEO Robert Riedel is pleased about the double recognition: “We are really proud having won this award. The Supernova has shown its’ strengths now for the second time against many other excellent competitors – it really proves that this laser system is a highly desired product. The Laser Focus World Innovators Award is a great incentive for us to continue our work and deliver outstanding products.

The spin-off company was founded in 2014 in Hamburg. The scientists from DESY and Helmholtz Institute Jena are developing high power lasers with pulses in the femtosecond range. A femtosecond is a quadrillionth of a second. With industry-leading parameters (pulse energy 1 mJ, pulse rate 100 kHz and power 100 W at pulse lengths less than 10 fs), experiments with the Supernova OPCPA are up to ten times faster compared to conventional Ti:Sapphire lasers. Shorter laser pulses allow more precise working of materials, for instance. Also, such short laser pulses open up new innovative applications wafer and mask inspection in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for chipmakers.