ULTRAFLEX · Bright and Compact Tuneable Far-Ultraviolet Light Sources for Industrial Applications

This ERC Proof of Concept project aims to validate a novel Far-Ultraviolet (FUV) light source technology for industrial material processing, addressing a critical bottleneck in precision manufacturing. Current FUV lasers are limited by poor beam quality, low efficiency, or high cost. Our solution, based on Resonant Dispersive-Wave (RDW) emission in gas-filled hollow-core fibres (HCFs), overcomes these limitations by offering high brightness (M2≈1), high optical efficiency (up to 15%), continuous tunability (110-350 nm), and ultrashort (few-fs) pulses in a robust, low-maintenance system.The project will bridge the gap from foundational ERC research (HISOL, XSOL) and prior industrialization efforts (ULIGHT, UCARE) to a market-ready prototype. We will achieve this by transforming a laboratory setup into an industrially hardened, transportable prototype (WP1). This prototype will then be used to conduct rigorous material processing validation and benchmarking against current industry standards, focusing on athermal ablation of materials challenging for traditional techniques (WP2). This will generate crucial data proving the technology's superior performance and value.