Sony to collaborate with Lightwave Electronics on green and UV devices
Sony Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) has licensed proprietary nonlinear optical-crystal technology to Lightwave Electronics Corp. (Mountain View, CA), and the two companies have agreed to develo¥CW and pulsed diode-pumped solid-state UV and green laser devices. Under the terms of the ten-year agreement, Sony will purchase lasers for its own use from Lightwave and will also receive royalties from Lightwave?s sale of jointly developed products. The two companies expect to cooperate on long-term development of laser products based on nonlinear frequency conversion that will provide more than 1 W output at various UV wavelengths. Such performance is particularly significant for UV-laser applications in microfabrication
and semiconductor processing. The companies estimate that the market for UV lasers is
$100 million and growing at 30% annually.