The high-technology company Trumpf presented the products and applications offered by its new business — Trumpf Photonic Components — for the first time at the recent LASER trade show in Munich.

They included sensors to support autonomous driving and components for facial-recognition functions, such as those already integrated in more than half a billion smartphones world-wide.

Christian Schmitz, Trumpf CEO (laser technology), said: “In the past few months, we have expanded our portfolio of laser products and technologies in areas of strategic importance, thus underpinning our claim to technological leadership.

“Creating new business fields enables us to gain a foothold in new market segments with a demand for advanced technology.”

The development of Trumpf Photonic Components, with its focus on a special type of diode laser known as the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), gives the company access to a new market segment that will complement its existing high-power diode laser business (www.trumpf.com).

In VCSEL technology, the diodes emit light perpendicularly to the surface of the semiconductor device, unlike conventional edge-emitting diodes, where the laser light is propagated horizontally to one or two end faces of the device.

Trumpf says that by adding VCSEL diodes to its range of semi-conductor-based laser sources, it has taken a “decisive step forward” in its business strategy.

The company’s laser technology product portfolio has also been expanded in other areas in recent months — for instance, with new ultrashort-pulse lasers based on InnoSlab technology and new low-power CO₂ lasers.