ILM sets up its crystal growth activities on Axel’One Campus
A team from the Material Light Institute (ILM) specialized in crystals has been operating in a laboratory on Axel’One Campus since April 2019.
Based on its expertise in crystal growth and concerned with the problems of crystals valuation, the Material Light Institute (ILM) is working on the study, the manufacture and analysis of crystals applied to modern technologies in different sectors of activity.
The crystalline materials have the particularity of having an atomic arrangement whose patterns repeat themselves perfectly over very long distances. Their manufacturing process must thus maintain the starting melt charge over long periods (from one day to several weeks depending on the formats), while preserving the purity in composition and phase. This makes their development very high-tech. These structural properties give them particular physical properties, often at the origin of technological upheavals: silicon in electronics, ruby for lasers, gallium nitride (GaN) in LEDs, etc. They currently play a key role in the design, production and use of many manufactured products in electronics, optics, sensors, mechanical resistance critical parts, impacting many major societal fields such as health, energy, communication and the major scientific instruments.
The luminescence team of the ILM leads close collaborations with different companies: SAFRAN, RSA Le Rubis, Fibercryst, Cyberstar, ECM, as well as CERN and Cristalinnov. At Axel’One Campus, the team has installed an original equipment for the development of high-performed crystals with controlled shape to be use in the aeronautics domain, high power laser and calorimetry for high energy physics. This equipment complements a set of crystalline synthesis enabling research and development at the highest level in this sector of activity.
