Objective
Over the years, lasers have become common tools for various fields of industry and medicine, as well as for basic and applied research. For many applications, it is necessary to precisely determine the output power of the laser in order to achieve optimum results. However, no commercial power meter exists, which allows laser power to be monitored "on-line" without the need for additional diffractive optical systems, designed for such applications.
Moreover, traditional power meters make use of thermoelectric or pyroelectric sensors, which are expensive (especially when used to measure high power lasers), and suffer from long response times. The proposed power meter prototype is based on the scattering of light by nanoparticles, either deposited, or embedded, in a transparent substrate. Most of the incident laser light is transmitted by the nanoparticle-containing substrate, but a small fraction of the laser light is scattered by the nanoparticles.
The intensity of the scattered light and its angle-dependent distribution can be measured to determine the power of the transmitted laser radiation. The development of a low-cost system, which may be integrated in laser systems, will allow for a better control of processes, resulting in improvements in process quality and safety. An initial technical feasibility check of the proposed technology has been carried out by the University of Barcelona, with such promising results that all partners have envisaged a huge exploitation potential.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP6-2002-SME-1
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