Following a brief presentation in 1999 to ICI technologists, portraying the many problems lasers could be applied to, the CLF was requested and funded by ICI to develop laser tweezers for fundamental measurements of colloidal forces related to commercially relevant products such as paints. The joint project was successful and seeded the development of what has proved to be a widely applicable technology for STFC.
The benefits not only included providing a world leading facility (providing some 15 weeks per year User programmes) but also continuing generation of external funds from other RCUK sectors (yielding to date in excess of £1M). The technique now also benefits several other cross-departmental research projects outside CLF including X-ray diffraction experiments at Diamond Light Source and Atmospheric Sciences research.
