StockerYale Inc., a provider of photonic-based products, announced today it will increase its investment in personnel and equipment to develop fibers for fiber lasers and amplifiers. "StockerYale continues to add top industry talent to its specialty optical fiber business in order to focus on advanced development of next-generation, rare-earth doped fibers," the company said in a statement. Richard P. Tumminelli, director of research and development for specialty optical fiber (SOF) at StockerYale, said, “It is well known in the fiber laser industry that most commercially available ytterbium fibers used in industrial lasers today display a phenomenon called photo-darkening, where the core material darkens with usage. When fiber lasers are operated at high power, this phenomenon will ultimately undermine the laser’s performance and lifetime.” Based on recent scientific work conducted at the company, Ivan Maksymyk, SOF program director, said research and product development "will focus principally on the alleviation of this photo-darkening effect through improved core glass composition, and on the improvement of power conversion efficiency, with respect to currently available ytterbium-doped fiber products." In addition, the company said it is dedicating future resources to optimize its erbium-doped fiber for high-power amplifiers used in network service applications such as video, high-speed Internet and telephony applications. Concurrent with the increased R&D, the company said, it will make additional capital investments to expand both its R&D and production capacity to address these market segments. Based on a recent report by Strategies Unlimited, the market for fiber lasers is expected to grow by a compound annual rate of approximately 39 percent, from $131 million in 2005 to $674 million by 2010. According to research firm Frost & Sullivan, the fiber amplifier market is estimated to grow from $412 million in 2005 to $540 million in 2009. “Given both the size and growth prospects for rare-earth fibers, as well as the fact that there are few independent manufacturers of such fibers, StockerYale is well-positioned to service these markets,” said Mark W. Blodgett, chairman and CEO. StockerYale, based in Salem, N.H., makes structured light lasers, LED modules and fluorescent lighting products, as well as specialty optical fibers and phase masks for OEMs in markets including machine vision, industrial inspection, defense, telecommunication, sensors and medical markets. For more information, visit: www.stockeryale.com