LIFT · Leadership in Fiber Technology

The LIFT project will establish international leadership for Europe in the science, application and production technologies for material processing by fibre lasers through the development of innovative laser sources. Major advances beyond the state of the art are planned: The cold-ablation fibre laser, based on ultra-short pulses, will open an entirely new market (100 mill.€ p.a.) for laser processing of ceramics. The extreme high-power fibre laser will enlarge the EUV lithography market (500 mill.€ p.a.) to include fibre lasers. The visible RGB fibre laser will produce the first high-brilliance source for laser projection displays (15 mill.€ p.a.). New future-oriented manufacturing tools based on higher-power pulsed fibre lasers (80 mill.€ p.a.). The high-reliability laser for large-scale manufacturing with High Speed Laser Remote Processing - means a new level of performance for 2kWatt materials-processing lasers with raised MTBF to 50.000 hours (accessible market 1 bill.€ p.a.). The Horizontal integration and networking in Europe’s high brilliance laser industry in this project will enable a greater market share for existing applications, create new areas of exploitation for manufacturing, and build a European network of component suppliers, laser manufacturers, universities and research institutes. As a result, LIFT will cause the following results to emerge: 1. Europe would take advantage of novel laser sources to be employed for various processing applications, many of which cannot even be treated by today’s lasers. 2. European companies will benefit by the exploitation of the knowledge by the LIFT consortium in the field of fibre lasers, thus creating new markets and improving productivity in existing ones, thus building the competitiveness and the technological role of Europe; 3. The society as a whole would benefit from the results of LIFT, because in many sectors the further development of laser processing is crucial for the improvement of the quality