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Some ten years ago, in a hotel in Pretoria, six men - some of whom had been summoned to South Africa from as far afield as Germany – met behind closed doors to deliberate on the future of laser research in this country after the government had discontinued its uranium enrichment program at the then South African Atomic Energy Corporation.
Their mission was to protect the future of laser research in South Africa and retain the expertise in the country.
Professor Reinhart Poprawe – managing director of the Fraunhofer-Institut für Lasertechnik ILT – was one of those men who, through his international laser expertise, helped decide the future of laser research and development in South Africa. Their meetings resulted in the formation of the CSIR National Laser Centre – a South African and an African success story in laser research. Poprawe is not shy to claim the title of being one of the “founding members” of the centre because of the seed he planted. He is still very involved and sits on the centre’s research advisory board. “A good 10 years ago, that’s when the whole thing started,” he recalls. “Even then it was obvious that laser technology could significantly contribute to scientific progress in the long term. We already knew that laser applications such as spectroscopy could be very useful”. The societal impact was obviously immediate, he added.
Two main motivations lead to the formation of the laser centre he said: “The first was to create a scientific platform for the study of this scientific instrument, which could be used, in various forms of exploratory research from astronomy to chemistry, atomic and molecular structures analyses. “The second motivation was to increase the application of lasers for direct economic benefits in the automotive, production and medical technology. The reason I received a phone call from Dr Neville Comins in 1999 to come to South Africa, was the expectation to come up with locally relevant future concepts – I think we succeeded in that.”
He said Dr Comins had tried to put together an international panel to meet here for four days to evaluate the question: Does it make sense to establish a laser centre in South Africa? “At that time, this country had tremendous activities around lasers in energy at the South African Atomic Energy Corporation, where these huge pulsed carbon dioxide and eximer lasers were used for uranium enrichment,” he said. “But it was clear that this was a limited application and the question was whether the applicability could be increased and further utilised in a more strategic laser activity of value to the whole of South Africa.”
Professor Poprawe still remembers that first day when he met with the South Africans. “First of all I wanted to know what South Africa does, what South Africa produces and how the country makes money,” he said.
“A few hours later I had all the information and it was clear that mining, production, medicine, farming and science all had wonderful application potential for lasers so we tailored the process around these unique applications.”
We came up with an idea, he continued, to bundle the forces and protect the technology.
Ten years later, Poprawe said, “You always can do better, but a tremendous base has been built in terms of scientific progress and engineering.” He was referring to the work that has been done by the CSIR in the past decade.
He said the number one demand was for a societal benefit to come out of the activity. “This can be two-fold,” he said. “In the last ten years I understood that it was very relevant for South Africa to have this scientific visibility. However, this should not be the primary focus. “We are not only out to publish articles in journals like “nature”. We aim to provide solutions for our partners, the public and the private environments by bringing innovations by laser technology to life”.
What makes him keep coming back? “It is the unique chance of combining professional exchange with scientific relevance,” said Poprawe. “And of course the opportunity to create a network of scientific study that will benefit not only South Africa, but the entire continent. To serve as a network bracket for all these countries to do something together and which could form a condensation point at which people meet and have something to foster and serve as a rail for an African motion.”
Poprawe, who also sits on the CSIR NLC Research Advisory Panel (RAP), presented a public lecture titled Laser applications of tomorrow: perspective and visions of ultrafast Laser materials processing and attended the centre’s RAP session at the CSIR Knowledge Commons recently.
Zooming into the future of the laser, Poprawe said laser technology had moved from products in the cm- range to “ships and chips” today. “In medical applications for instance, lasers can be used in bio-artificial implants such as tooth implants.”
He said that due to the advances made in laser technology, the world is set to witness dramatic changes in the production technologies of manufactured goods and in materials processing. He explained: “With the quality of high power lasers which we achieve now we will see processes like generative production or remote processing by lasers”.
He is part of a group that works on a project called “Man on the Moon” at his institute. “The project motivation is to one day be able to make memory sticks with 4 gigabytes for R30 and that is possible,” he said. The key is to develop a light source of very short wavelength (extreme ultraviolet at 13 nm) to be able to miniaturize transistors on a chip by a factor of 100 compared to present technology. A corresponding reduction in price is thus expected. The “Aachen Light” uses lasers to evaporate just the number of atoms needed to generate a local electrical discharge fed plasma in a vacuum environment, which transmits this next generation radiation for lithography. A conventional DVD data carrier has a 4.7gigabyte capability. It stores everything from music to movies and other files. “In a few years from now, all the DVDs and CDs will be gone, because you can have everything on a chip, which will be far cheaper. And of course the computers will get much faster,” he said. He added that his institute is in the process of developing laser technology for landmine detection and demining. “Imagine a landmine buried for 20 years - however all mines leak and that is why dogs can smell them,” he said. “We thought if dogs can smell a leaking mine, then bacteria can smell it too. Thus, we came up with a concept of training bacteria to react on the presence of single explosive molecules and produce 10.000 flourophores in the following few hours, which then enables us to detect them at night by lasers from 100m above and localize the position of the mine with an accuracy of about 10 cm. A subsequent project deals with the controlled destruction of the mines by remote high power lasers
Poprawe studied Physics at the University of Mainz, received a Master’s degree from California State University/Fresno, and then went on to study Physics at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt receiving a PhD in 1980. From 1985 to 1989, Poprawe was head of the Laser Process Development Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology.
In 1989, he was appointed CEO of Thyssen Laser-Technology GmbH Aachen, a position that he held up to 1996. He was appointed Professor of Laser Technology at the RWTH Aachen and has been Head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology since 1996.
Poprawe was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers in the USA in 1998, a fellow of the Laser Institute of America in 2006, and serves in many national and international boards as advisor, referee and consultant.
CSIR Communication:
Mzimasi Gcukumana , email: MGcukumana@csir.co.za
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