On August the 4th, partners from the iQonic project gathered in Tampere, Finland at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) of Tampere University (TAU) to participate in the workshop on the Brighterwave use case. Brighterwave is a small SME that focuses on providing highly compact laser-based RGB engines for various applications such as Virtual and Augmented reality. It is a spin-off of Tampere University (TAU).

The Optoelectronics Research Centre of TAU hosted the workshop meeting, Prof. Mircea Guina started the event by introducing the ORC, its capabilities, and research activities. Dr. Janne Konttinen of Brighterwave then introduced the company’s use case, which is about an easy reconfiguration and smart ramp-up of laser-engine production, exemplarily demonstrated by a laser-to-fiber coupling miniaturized design, that was designed together with Fraunhofer IOF.

TAU focused, in collaboration with Brighterwave, on an optomechanical implementation of the design that takes disassembling and recycling/reuse into account, employing a 3D-printed miniaturized optics mount that also allows for easy reconfiguration. The results, when implementing the design and its assembly process on a ficonTEC machine at TAU’s premises, are promising, although further, post-project efforts have to be made to improve the accuracy and yield of the assembly processes.

The workshop was concluded by a poll, conducted by the project partner CORE Innovation, about exploitation opportunities of the use case results in the photonics industry. The results of this poll are currently combined with the polls conducted during the previous use case workshops. They shall provide valuable input towards an envisaged joint consortium activity after the project to establish the scientific-technical results in a service-based commercial environment.

Figure 1 – On site participants

Figure 2 – Online participants