Three teams of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists, each supported by a Lab business development executive, have captured regional awards for technology transfer from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC).
This year’s awards, two for outstanding commercialization success and one for outstanding technology development, were presented Aug. 29 during the FLC’s three-day Far West/Mid-Continent regional meeting at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel in Oklahoma City.
Started in 1974, the FLC assists the U.S. public and private sectors in using technologies developed by federal research labs. It is comprised of more than 300 federal labs and research centers.
Since 2007, LLNL has garnered 33 regional awards for technology transfer from the FLC.
Advanced petawatt laser
One of the Lab researchers’ two awards for outstanding commercialization success featured one of Livermore’s largest-ever technology transfer projects — the design, development and construction of an advanced petawatt laser system.
Under a $52 million agreement with the Czech Republic’s European Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), Lab researchers developed and constructed the laser system in only three years from concept to product, delivering the laser to the facility in June 2017.
Known as the High-repetition-rate Advanced Petawatt Laser (HAPLS), the new laser system was designed and constructed by LLNL’s NIF and Photon Science Directorate (NIF&PS).
What makes HAPLS unique is its repetition rate and repeatability. It can fire up to 10 times per second and deliver in each of these pulses the peak power of 1 quadrillion watts — an order of magnitude faster than any other high-peak power laser in the world. This high repetition rate translates into photon flux that is important for commercial applications: HAPLS can deliver up to about 1.1 megajoules per hour of petawatt pulses. Furthermore, the high repetition rate allows exploration of new science with unprecedented precision.
After an evaluation by an international peer review group, the HAPLS petawatt laser was declared fully integrated and operational at the ELI Beamlines Research Center in Dolní Břežany, Czech Republic in June. The group assessed the laser performance, determined that all required performance parameters had been successfully met and that the system was ready for integration with the experimental systems as well as for first experiments.
Leading the HAPLS project allowed LLNL to draw on its decades of pioneering laser research and development and apply that expertise to advance new laser concepts important for its mission as a national laboratory. The collaboration extended beyond LLNL and ELI Beamlines. By partnering with industry — and drawing on LLNL’s expertise in laser research and development — the team provided a number of critical advances.
Constantin Haefner, the program director for Advanced Photon Technologies at LLNL, notes that in the drive to achieve the far-reaching objectives of the HAPLS project, LLNL and its industrial partners jointly developed revolutionary components that are now on the market and that led to new business opportunities.
The LLNL-Czech partnership was made possible through an Agreement for Commercializing Technology (ACT) — a new technology transfer mechanism piloted by the U.S. Department of Energy in June 2012.
This mechanism was conceived to help national laboratories form research partnerships using contractual terms better aligned with industry practice. Under an ACT, national lab contractors may take on financial risk that the U.S. government cannot assume.
In addition to Haefner, other key leaders in the technology transfer effort included Andy Bayramian, LLNL systems architect; Thomas Spinka, LLNL short pulse commissioning manager; Dan Mason, LLNL chief mechanical engineer; Jeff Horner, LLNL project manager; Craig Siders, senior scientist and commercial technology development leader; Genaro Mempin and David Dawes, business development executives from the Lab’s Innovation and Partnerships Office (IPO); Roman Hvezda, ELI project manager; and Bedřich Rus, ELI laser delivery manager.