Beam Sources

The Fraunhofer Group for Light & Surfaces focuses, in particular, its know-how on developing diverse beam sources. The various institutes of the group develop laser beam sources, electron-beam sources, X-ray and EUV sources as well as plasma sources. Here, the institutes act as partners for the various source developers in the market. In addition, they develop and build special beam sources for specific uses, which are placed into the customer’s particular application. Examples are measuring laser-beam sources for lidar measurements installed in aircrafts and satellites.

In addition to these special laser and beam-source developments, the institutes deal with innovative laser beam sources and high-quality optical components and systems. Their experienced laser experts develop beam sources with tailor-made spatial, temporal and spectral properties and output powers in the range μW to GW. The spectrum of laser beam sources ranges from diode lasers to fiber and solid-state lasers, from high-power cw lasers to ultra-short pulse lasers and from single-frequency systems to broadband tunable lasers.

For applications of, above all, coating technology, the institutes are developing powerful electron-beam and plasma sources that can be integrated into appropriate systems. The group focuses here on combining such sources with production processes; in these cases, the beam source parameters need to be coordinated with the process parameters exactly.

For applications requiring a particularly short wavelength, such as lithography and analytics, the institutes are developing laser- and plasma-based X-ray and EUV sources in the wavelength range from 1 nm to 50 nm. The group’s specific competence lies mainly in generating novel laser-based coherent X-ray and EUV radiation as well as in building compact EUV sources at 13.5 nm for a wide range of measurement applications in EUV lithography.