The winners of the Laser Technology Innovation Award were announced in Aachen, Germany
The first prize of the 2026 Laser Technology Innovation Award was awarded to Tobias Dyck, the head of the LEAF business department at 4JET Microtech GmbH. The prize money for this award is 10000 euros (approximately 11684 US dollars), aimed at recognizing Dyck and his team's innovation in LEAF laser rib technology, particularly their green aviation "Shark Skin" project.
The Innovation Award for Laser Technology is presented every two years to laser manufacturers and users, as well as researchers and developers who have spearheaded a laser technology innovation from application-oriented research to successful industrial implementation. It is organized by the Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik (AKL) eV, a network of over 200 laser experts.
The 2026 winners were celebrated April 22 at a ceremony in Aachen, Germany.
The LEAF Laser Riblets project focuses on laser-based fabrication of riblet structures on surfaces. Inspired by shark skin, these microstructures reduce drag and improve aerodynamics. Using 4JET's Laser Enhanced Air Flow (LEAF) technology, riblets can now be incorporated directly into the paint layer of components over large areas for the first time. This process uses a high-power CO2 laser system with interference technology that generates multiple microstructures simultaneously, making it significantly faster than previous methods.
(From left) Claus Schnitzler, Ulrich Berners, Jochen Stollenwerk, Lutz Aschke, Gwenn Pallier, Tobias Dyck, Oliver Haupt, Kristina zur Mühlen, and Markus Kogel-Hollacher.
This technology has great potential in aviation; riblet structures on aircraft surfaces can reduce fuel consumption by up to 3%. This equates to savings of around $2.5 billion per year and a reduction of almost 10 million tons of CO2 in long-haul passenger traffic. Furthermore, LEAF technology opens possibilities for more efficient wind turbines, ships, and high-speed trains because improved aerodynamics and hydrodynamics contribute to higher energy efficiency and lower emissions.
The project “Beyond Free-Space Beams: Pure Stability and Robust Fiber Delivery to Open New Frontiers for Ultrafast Lasers” earned second place. The PureBeam project addresses a key challenge in the industrial application of ultrashort-pulse lasers — beam guidance.
CANUNDA-USP PureBeam by Cailabs offers an innovative solution by enabling stable coupling in hollow-core fibers and reliably ensuring and maintaining beam quality, even when the input beam is subject to interference. This makes manufacturing systems more robust and efficient and makes ultrashort pulse (USP) lasers easier to integrate.
This technology unlocks new fields of application and, for the first time, enables true industrial-scale mass production in sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing, consumer electronics, medical technology, and the automotive and aerospace industries.
Third place recognized the project “Laser Mass Transfer of Micro-LED’s — A Breakthrough to Commercialization Using a Holistic System Approach.” Undertaken by Coherent LaserSystems, the project developed innovative laser mass transfer technology for manufacturing micro-LED displays.
Coherent’s integrated approach enables the ultra-fast, contactless transfer of micro-LED chips as part of a holistic solution that combines fast, contactless micro-LED laser transfer, a high-precision system architecture and a comprehensive software package — including AI functionality — to optimize transfer strategies and parameters from wafer to panel. The result is a significant increase in throughput and yield, whilst manufacturing costs are noticeably reduced.
Source: photonics
