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www.photonics.com December 2012 Polymer Optics • CMOS Sensors • Streak Cameras Let There Be LEDs Cameras, Optics Drive Development
www.photonics.com December 2012
Polym
er Optics •
CM
OS S
ensors • S
treak Cam
erasD
ecember 2
012
Let There Be
LEDsCameras, Optics Drive Development
1212PScover.indd 1 11/27/12 10:15 AM
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4 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Content • • • • • • • •DECEMBER 2012 www.photonics.com VOLUME 46 ISSUE 12
24 59 74
Departments & Columns10 EDITORIALDon’t stop thinking about tomorrow
16 LIGHT SPEEDBusiness and Markets• Solar woes have not eclipsed market
for lasers for solar tech• Milestone marks major optics
achievements• ESO celebrates its 50th anniversary
24 TECH PULSEResearch and technology headlines of the month • FEL fi res new life into old technology• Semiconductor etching monitored
in real time• Nobel Prize in physics recognizes
quantum world experiments
59 WORKFORCE OF TOMORROWA view from the inside
61 GREENLIGHTSignifi cant ecophotonics developments • Laser pulse improves black silicon’s
solar effi ciency
65 NEW PRODUCTS
71 HAPPENINGS
73 ADVERTISER INDEX
74 LIGHTER SIDE
PHOTONICS SPECTRA ISSN-0731-1230, (USPS 448870) IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY Laurin Publishing Co. Inc., Berkshire Common, PO Box 4949, Pittsfi eld, MA 01202, +1 (413) 499-0514; fax: +1 (413) 442-3180; e-mail: photonics@photonics. com. TITLE reg. in US Library of Congress. Copyright ® 2012 by Laurin Publishing Co. Inc. All rights reserved. Copies of Photonics Spectra on microfi lm are available from University Microfi lm, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48103. Photonics Spectra articles are indexed in the Engineering Index. POSTMASTER: Send form 3579 to Photonics Spectra, Berkshire Common, PO Box 4949, Pittsfi eld, MA 01202. Periodicals postage paid at Pittsfi eld, MA, and at additional mailing offi ces. CIRCULATION POLICY: Photonics Spectra is distributed without charge to qualifi ed scientists, engineers, technicians, and management personnel. Eligibility requests must be returned with your business card or organization’s letterhead. Rates for others as follows: $122 per year, prepaid. Overseas postage: $28 surface mail, $108 airmail per year. Inquire for multiyear subscription rates. Publisher reserves the right to refuse nonqualifi ed subscriptions. ARTICLES FOR PUBLICATION: Scientists, engineers, educators, technical executives and technical writers are invited to contribute articles on optical, laser, fi ber optic, electro-optical, imaging, optoelectronics and related fi elds. Communications regarding the edito-rial content of Photonics Spectra should be addressed to the managing editor. Contributed statements and opinions expressed in Photonics Spectra are t hose of the contributors – the publisher assumes no responsibility for them.
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 5
PHOTONICS: The technology of generating and harnessing light and other forms of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. The range of applications of photonics extends from energy generation to detection to communications and information processing.
46
50 54
Features
41 ISSUE FOCUS: LEDS AT 50
42 STREAK CAMERAS IMPROVE MATERIALS RESEARCH
by Barbara Stumpp, Science WriterSoftware calibration options are refi ning the analysis of zinc oxide, a potential active material for LEDs and solid-state lasers.
46 CMOS SENSORS INCREASE INSPECTION SPEED AND ACCURACY
by Marie Freebody, Contributing EditorPredictions are that advances in resolution and effi ciency will make the technology as successful in line-scan applications as in area scanning.
50 PLASTIC OPTICS PROVIDE PRECISION
by Valerie Coffey, Science Writer Progress in injection molding has improved polymer optics, which have taken hold in a wide range of everyday applications.
54 CHARGE-INJECTION DEVICES OVERCOME RADIATION EFFECTS
by Tony Chapman, Thermo Fisher Scientifi cAn expert on charge-transfer-device image sensors discusses their advantages for surmounting radiation effects.
57 SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM ENABLES 24-HOUR TARGET ACQUISITION
by John Staples, Defence Vision SystemsA multidetector system uses lasers and multiple-wavelength sensors for day- and nighttime detection and identifi cation.
1212Contents.indd 5 12/3/12 4:11 PM
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We began our first research project on solid-state imagers in 1972. And since that time, our image sensors have delivered unrivaled image quality, high reliability and innovative features to customers across the globe.
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10 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
The nice thing about tomorrow is that it’s, well, always a day away, and it always brings a fresh set of opportunities to tackle and obstacles to overcome.
A perpetual challenge for this and many industries is finding trained and qualified employees to fill specialized jobs today and tomorrow. The good news is that a lot of hard work is going on to make sure there are well-qualified people to step into demanding technical positions, and a lot of people supporting those efforts:
• In early October, Schott North America announced the selection of nine apprentices for a pilot program at its Duryea, Pa., facility; the program offers young people a combination of practical experience and classroom training, based on the German apprenticeship model.
• Sydor Optics, a maker of custom optics in Rochester, N.Y., has a long history with nearby Monroe Community College. Its optical fabrication program has been an important pipeline of trained technicians for Bausch & Lomb, Kodak and Sydor Optics: James Sydor was himself a student in the program, and now he has commit-ted to a generous donation to the program over the next five years, a partial match to a Corning grant expressly for the optics program.
• Many dedicated people are working to generate student interest in optics and photonics well before college. I attended Education Day during OSA’s Frontiers in Optics this year and saw demonstrations of projects aimed at introducing optics and photonics to students in grades as early as kindergarten.
Curious about who is training your future employees? I invite you to read our newest column – Workforce of Tomorrow – curated by two-time industry education honoree Judy Donnelly, longtime coordinator for the Laser and Fiber Optic Technology program at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, Conn. In this issue, Judy answers 10 questions about her work as an educator and shares her thoughts on what it will take to build the workforce of tomorrow.
For more than 50 years, Laurin Publishing/Photonics Media have been an impor-tant industry education resource. Beginning in 1971, The Optical Industry and Systems Purchasing Directory – the precursor to our current Photonics Buyers’ Guide – included a dictionary and an Application Notes section, later The Photonics Handbook. For a number of years now, the handbook and dictionary have made their home online at Photonics.com. This month, we are officially relaunching web versions of these popular resources on a new site called EDU.Photonics.com. Our online dictionary – renamed Photonics Dictionary Plus – allows industry experts to update terms with, for example, new appli-cation information and to add links to resources such as videos and articles.
In its new format and with your help, the Dictionary Plus will continue to be the cutting-edge lexicon relied upon by thousands throughout the industry – and the industry of tomorrow!
editorialcommenT
• • • • • • • •Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
editorial Advisory Board
Dr. Robert R. Alfano City College of New York
Walter Burgess Power Technology Inc.
Dr. Michael J. Cumbo IDEX Optics & Photonics
Dr. Timothy Day Daylight Solutions
Dr. Anthony J. DeMaria Coherent-DEOS LLC
Dr. Donal Denvir Andor Technology PLC
Patrick L. Edsell Avanex Corp.
Dr. Stephen D. Fantone Optikos Corp.
Randy Heyler Ondax Inc.
Dr. Michael Houk Bristol Instruments Inc.
Dr. Kenneth J. Kaufmann Hamamatsu Corp.
Brian Lula PI (Physik Instrumente) LP
Eliezer Manor Shirat Enterprises Ltd., Israel
Shinji Niikura Coherent Japan Inc.
Dr. Morio Onoe professor emeritus, University of Tokyo
Dr. William Plummer WTP Optics
Dr. Richard C. Powell University of Arizona
Dr. Ryszard S. Romaniuk Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
Samuel P. Sadoulet Edmund Optics
Dr. Steve Sheng Telesis Technologies Inc.
William H. Shiner IPG Photonics Corp.
John M. Stack Zygo Corp.
Dr. Albert J.P. Theuwissen Harvest Imaging/Delft University
of Technology, Belgium
Kyle Voosen National Instruments Corp.
1212Editorial.indd 10 11/30/12 5:12 PM
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12 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Photonics Media on Facebook
We share the latest industry news and research with our global Facebook community each and every day. Search for “Photonics Media” and join us today!
Welcome to
The online companion to Photonics Spectra
What’s Online:
Our collection of helpful resources for students, educators and researchers, including the Photonics Dictionary+; Photonics Handbook; a list of societies, associations, universities and research centers; interactive laser charts; webinars; white papers; and our Light Matters weekly newscasts.
Photonics in Space ApplicationsThursday, November 15, 2012 - 1 p.m. EST/ 10 a.m. PST/ 5 p.m. GMT/UTC
Photonics Media hosted: Dr. Alexander Rubenchik, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., “The Promise of Pulsed Lasers in Removing Orbital Debris.”For more information and to watch the archived webinars, visit Photonics.com/Webinars.
In case you missed our FREE webinar …
1212What'sOnline.indd 12 11/30/12 6:25 PM
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14 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Tony ChapmanTony Chapman is the director of sales and marketing for CIDTEC cameras and imagers at Thermo Fisher Scientific; he has helped advance imaging technologies in scientific and radiation markets for OEMs, military applications and more. Page 54.
Valerie C. CoffeyValerie C. Coffey is a freelance science and technology writer in Massachusetts with an MA in astronomy. Her articles on optics, photonics, astronomy and physics have appeared in various industry publications. Page 50.
Judy DonnellyJudy Donnelly is program coordinator for the Laser and Fiber Optic Technology program at Three Rivers Com-munity College in Connecticut. She recently was recognized by The Optical Society for con-tributions to optical science and engineering education. Page 59.
Marie FreebodyRegular contributor Marie Freebody is a freelance science and technology journalist. She has a master’s degree in physics with a concentration in nuclear astrophysics from the University of Surrey in the UK. Page 46.
John StaplesJohn Staples is sales director at Defence Vision Systems in East Sussex, UK. He has more than 50 years of experience in engineering, project manage-ment and sales in the field of military night vision and optical/electronic systems. Page 57.
Dr. Barbara StumppDr. Barbara Stumpp is a freelance journalist and PR writer in Freiburg, Germany. She studied physics and mathematics and now works on B2B enterprises in the manufacturing and engineer-ing areas. Page 42.
ConTriBuTorS
Photonics Spectra ...In the January issue of
• Defense
• Environment
• Health Care
• Manufacturing
• Smartphones
• Economy
You’ll also find all the news that affects your industry, from tech trends and market reports to the latest products and media.
n Check out a sample of the digital version of Photonics Spectra magazine at www.photonics.com/DigitalSample. It’s a whole new world of information for people in the global photonics industry.
Our annual trends issue will examine the various forces currently driving photonics innovation as well as the ways in which photonics impacts the world. Topics will include:
1212ContAuthors.indd 14 11/30/12 5:13 PM
16 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Europe’s photovoltaic (PV) market is fac-ing challenges including cuts in govern-ment subsidies and incentives, and those challenges affect laser makers who supply PV fabricators with equipment. But the outlook isn’t as cloudy as it could be. For one thing, approximately two-thirds of the new solar panels installed around the world in 2011 were put up on European soil, according to a recent report from the European Commission’s Joint Research Center. Clearly, the market for solar won’t disappear anytime soon.
To get an inside look at the situation, Photonics Spectra recently spoke with representatives of two European compa-nies that make laser equipment for PV manufacturing: Alejandro Becker, direc-tor of sales at InnoLas Systems in Krail-ing, Germany, and Jörg Jetter, founder
and CEO of 4JET Technologies GmbH in Alsdorf, Germany.
Q: How would you say the market has been in the past few years for PV manufacturing lasers?Jetter: After a small dip in 2009, there has been a tremendous investment boom in 2010 that ended [in] early 2011. Since then, new business is relatively flat, and we expect the next two years to see little in terms of capacity increases.
However, we do expect to sell further equipment aiming at development of new cell concepts, such as flexible and/or or-ganic PV and line enhancement projects, to [a] few select players as well as new CIGS [copper indium gallium selenide] projects.Becker: The current market conditions
start to separate the men from the boys. PV manufacturers have become more demanding to get robust solutions that work 24/7/365.
I think this is a healthy development and only normal for a maturing market.
Q: Where do you think the market is going?Becker: The recent past has seen a market consolidation, but medium-term, there is only one way: up. Major econo-mies like Germany and Japan are moving away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, and that means investments in renewable energies like PV.
Also, we are not only talking about new PV fabs. We are seeing a significant demand for retrofitting existing produc-tion lines with advanced laser systems to
Light Speed•
• Laser Light Engines gets $9M to drive commercialization • Space Photonics licenses communications tech to Schott •
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics En-
gineers (IEEE) honored the late Elias Snitzer,
the father of fiber lasers and fiber amplifi-
ers, with a granite plaque installed near the
former American Optical headquarters in
Southbridge, Mass., where his discoveries
were made. The IEEE Milestone, the 129th
bestowed by the institute, honors Snitzer and
colleagues, who built and operated the first
optical fiber laser in 1961 and, three years
later, the first optical fiber amplifier. Snitzer’s
Milestone Marks Major Optics Achievements
Phot
onic
s M
edia
pho
tos
by M
elin
da R
ose.
inventions include both neodymium- and erbi-
um-doped laser glass, and he co-developed
the first fiber optic laser amplifier with laser
glass.
Former colleagues, such as Will Hicks;
Snitzer’s children, and IEEE members and
others in the optics industry gathered to pay
tribute to Snitzer at the Oct. 26 ceremony.
Solar woes have not eclipsed market for lasers for solar tech
1212LightSpeed.indd 16 11/30/12 5:14 PM
December 2012 Photonics Spectra 17
increase cell efficiency and productivity.Jetter: We serve another very traditional industry: tire manufacturing. For us, this is an example of a mature and consoli-dated industry with the top five players sharing approximately 70 percent of the market and basically only one dominant technology to produce an almost com-moditized product.
Ultimately, solar will be not much different, though it will certainly take a decade until this is sorted out. Until then, the race is open – and even if it seems unlikely now, we could still [see] the dominance of crystalline silicon [dimin-ish] somewhat.
Q: What do you see as the “next big thing” in laser-based PV manufacturing in general?Becker: In a nutshell, efficiency and productivity. End users have understood the importance of high efficiency, so this has become a major selling point for cell manufacturers.
Likewise, the market is price sensitive, and this means that productivity must be increased to reduce manufacturing costs and cost of ownership. Our ILS TT laser system for contact opening is a good ex-ample for this: It allows [users] to improve the efficiency of standard monocrystalline cells by up to 1 percent with a throughput of 3400 wafers per hour. This has made it a very popular solution in the market.
Jetter: We expect that third-generation thin-film concepts on flexible substrates have great long-term potential.
Q: Are you seeing any new and exciting advances coming out of R&D and/or university labs?Jetter: We see significant progress both in organic PV, as well as steady efficiency increases in the CIGS, CdTe and also a-Si community.Becker: We are cooperating closely with a number of the leading research labs in this market and also do extensive R&D in our own laboratory. There are a couple of promising new technologies that we evaluate, but it is our philosophy to in-troduce new concepts only when they are production-ready.
The manufacturers do not need spec-tacular lab results but systems that work reliably in industrial production lines.
Q: What are the biggest challenges to new advances in lasers for PV manufacturing? Jetter: The economical difficulties of the target market.Becker: The biggest challenge is to develop systems that are tailored to a specific customer’s need. It is a question of fine-tuning all components and param-eters to perfectly match the manufactur-ing environment.
Many customers are positively surprised when they see the optimized results our application engineers achieve.
Q: And which application areas would you say are thriving – and why? Becker: We see a big demand for laser systems catering [to] the PERC (passiv-ated emitter and rear cell) technology to significantly [increase] the efficiency of crystalline cells, while at the same time enabling a higher throughput with a mini-mum of additional footprint needed.
As I said earlier, cell efficiency and productivity are crucial for cell manufac-turers, and these investments pay off in a very short time.
Laura S. [email protected]
Light Speed•
• Telops lands leak detection contract in China • Directed energy weapon advances to high-power testing •
By examining the effectiveness of recycling light in ultrabright short-discharge plasma lamps, researchers at Ben-Gurion Uni-versity of the Negev in Israel revealed that light returned to a lamp’s radiant zone can heighten the brightness by up to 70 percent.
A dual-purpose lens that ac-quires and displays images for mobile video communication was proposed by investigators at Cambridge University in the UK and at Edith Cowan Univer-sity in Joondalup, Australia.
Westech Inc. of Ventura, Calif., developed a real-time fiber optic downhole video system and an electro fiber optic cable for deep, high-pressure oil- and gas-well environments.
Neil Madonick, a product mar-keting manager for charge-coupled devices at Fairchild Semiconductor in Palo Alto, Calif., wrote an article on how innovative uses of the devices were helping to revolutionize office procedures, manufactur-ing and a host of other things.
2007
2002
1992
1982
This month in historyWhat were you working on five, 10, 20 or even 30 years ago? Photonics Spectra editors perused past December issues and unearthed the following:
IP Processor
Dec PS 2002TechWorldTWTwoWay-part bJanice
4JET Technologies GmbH supplies laser equipment for materials processing in the thin-film industry, including, as seen here, laser patterning of third-generation flexible solar cells.
4JET
1212LightSpeed.indd 17 11/30/12 5:14 PM
18 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
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Light Speed•
• Production of Navy laser sensors fast-tracked • JDSU sells holographic security line to OpSec Security•
PEOPLE IN THE NEWSPhotonic crystal fiber inventor Philip Russell was elected as The Optical Society’s (OSA) 2013 vice president. He is the found-ing director of Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, and the founding chair of the OSA Topical Meeting on Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity and Poling in Glass Waveguides.
Shuji Nakamura, a professor at the Univer-sity of California, Santa Barbara, since 2000, was honored recently as the 2012 Inventor of the Year by the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association for inventions including the blue LED as well as for his intellectual property protection efforts.
Veeco Instruments Inc. CEO John R. Peeler has joined the board of fiber laser company IPG Photonics Corp. in Oxford, Mass. He joined Veeco in 2007 and was named board chairman in May 2012.
Spectroscopy products maker Avantes BV of Apeldoorn, Nether-lands, has named Robert
Hukshorn as its new director of sales and marketing. His interna-tional sales and marketing experience includes management positions at several high-tech companies, including Amcor and Henkel.
Ira Tiffen is the new vice president of the Motion Picture Filters Div. at Schneider
Optics Inc. of Van Nuys, Calif. He has four decades of experience in developing special-ized optics for the film, television and still-photography markets. At his own company, Optefex LLC, he developed the Optefex Blue Streak filter line, which he will bring to Schneider.
University of Arizona astronomer and optical physicist Olivier Guyon has been selected as a MacArthur Fellow for 2012. He won this fellowship, nicknamed the “Genius Grant,” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his breakthrough imaging technique for finding Earth-like planets outside of our solar system.
Avan
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1212LightSpeed.indd 18 11/30/12 5:14 PM
© 2012 Raytheon Company. All rights reserved. “Customer Success Is Our Mission” is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
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challenges — from producing the highest resolution images ever taken of the Earth to enhancing virtually any optical system. Raytheon EO Innovations
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12NCS315_EDinnovations_PnotonicsSpectra_Nov2012.indd 1 10/12/12 3:40 PM1212_Raytheon_Pg19.indd 19 11/30/12 5:06 PM
20 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Light Speed•
ASML acquiring Cymer for $2.5B to boost chip technology • Flir Systems to acquire Lorex Technology •
A minimalistic modern table lamp design using illuminant organic LED (OLED) technology won Fabian Schleyerbach the 2012 “coOLED” student design competition at the Belektro 2012 Trade Fair for Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Lighting, held in Berlin. Schleyerbach, a student at the Academy for Interior and Object Design in Cham, Germany, used Tabola OLEDs from the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Organics, Materials and Electronic Devices COMEDD. be
lekt
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Ber
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The European Southern Observatory (ESO)
celebrated 50 years in October since the
signing of its founding convention. Astrono-
mers from five European countries – Belgium,
France, Germany, the Netherlands and Swe-
den – decided in 2007 to join forces to build
a large telescope to survey the southern sky.
ESO now operates three observation sites
in Chile, including the Very Large Telescope
(VLT) at Paranal – an advanced visible-light
astronomical observatory.
This VLT image of the Thor’s Helmet Nebula
was taken on the occasion of the anniversary
with the help of Brigitte Bailleul, who won the
“Tweet Your Way to the VLT!” competition, dur-
ing which the public, for the first time, was
able to choose what the VLT would observe.
The observations were broadcast live over
the Internet from the Paranal Observatory.
Also known as NGC 2359, the helmet-shaped
nebula lies in the constellation Canis Major. It
is about 15,000 light-years away from Earth
and more than 30 light-years across.
ESO celebrates its 50th anniversary
ESO/
B. B
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“Without advances in the performance of image sensors, it is not possible to exploit parallel advances in illumination, data transmis-sion, image-processing hardware and image-processing software.”
– Eric Fox, technical director of CMOS integrated circuits at Teledyne Dalsa in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
1212LightSpeed.indd 20 11/30/12 5:14 PM
December 2012 Photonics Spectra 21
Light Speed•MOVES & EXPANSIONSEdmund Optics of Barrington, N.J., plans to consolidate its Pennsburg, Pa., facility into its corporate headquarters and to invest in additional coating and metrology equipment for its recently expanded plants in Akita, Japan, and Singapore.
Newport Corp. of Irvine, Calif., has acquired the products and technology of Tempe, Ariz.-based Vistek Inc. The new vibration-isolation products will be offered as part of Newport’s VIBe line and will include mechanical isola-tion bearings, benchtop platforms and stand-alone workstations.
Rochester, N.Y.-based Germanow-Simon
Corp., the parent company of G-S Plastic
Optics, has completed a $3.2 million upgrade to its St. Paul Street facility, includ-ing doubling the manufacturing space for injection molding and quality-assurance operations.
DirectPhotonics Industries GmbH, a Berlin-based provider of ultrahigh-brightness direct diode lasers for materials processing, has appointed ULO Optics Inc. of Los Gatos, Calif., as its representative for the US and Canada.
Under a new five-year licensing deal, NHG (Hubei, New HuaGuang Information
Materials Co. Ltd.) will make and distribute LightPath Technologies Inc.’s Gradium glass lenses in Asia. The lenses are suitable for high-power industrial laser systems. Orlando, Fla.-based LightPath also plans to develop a low-cost technique for manufacturing IR optics.
COLLABORATIONS
IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. of Van-couver, British Columbia, Canada, and Inrad Optics Inc. of Northvale, N.J., have teamed up to evaluate the viability and commercialization of IBC’s Beral-cast alloys as a cost-effective alternative substrate material for custom precision optical systems components.
Edmund Optics’ new manufacturing facility in Singapore.
Edm
und
Opt
ics
1212LightSpeed.indd 21 11/30/12 5:15 PM
“”22 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Businesses and consumers may soon have a cheaper, more manageable way to store large amounts of digital data, thanks to a university startup that aims to make opti-cal films capable of holding 1 to 2 TB – or about 50 Blu-ray movies.
As an alternative to storing data on en-ergy-wasting magnetic discs or cumber-some magnetic tapes, Folio Photonics will use optical technology first developed by the Center for Layered Polymeric Systems at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Engineering to make an optical film with 64 data layers.
“A disc will be on the capacity scale of magnetic tapes used for archival data storage,” said Kenneth D. Singer, the Am-brose Swasey Professor of Physics at Case Western Reserve and co-founder of Folio Photonics. “But they’ll be substantially cheaper and have one advantage: You can access data faster. You just pop the disc in your computer, and you can find the data in seconds. Tapes can take minutes to wind through to locate particular data.”
To make the 64-data-layer film, Singer and graduate student Brent Valle spread a thick, puttylike flow of repeatedly divided and stacked polymers into a film and rolled onto a spool; they estimate they can make a square kilometer of film in 1 h. They then cut and paste film onto the same hard plastic base on which DVDs and Blu-rays are built. Slight adjustments to a standard disc reader are necessary to enable it to probe and read the data on each layer without interference from lay-ers above or below, they say.
The researchers aren’t the only ones pursuing terabyte-storage discs, Singer said. Other companies are “looking into a holographic technology, which requires two lasers to write the data and will require a whole new writer/reader. Ours has the advantage of lower manufacturing costs and is more compatible with current readers and writers.”
Folio Photonics’ discs are aimed at storing data not often or instantaneously needed. This could be useful for patholo-gists who store not only slides of tissues,
but also the digital images they make, which can be manipulated to gather more information about disease or damage.
The Cleveland-based startup is the third company to come out of the Center for Layered Polymeric Systems. The sci-entists hope to have prototype discs and readers to show within a year.
The research was published in Advanced Materials (doi: 10.1002/adma.201200669).
Light Speed•• Study finds 1M UK jobs depend on physics • Precision Optics sees 22.5% increase in Q4 revenue over 2011 •
It’s so clever, we should have thought of it.
– Coherent Inc. CEO John Ambroseo, on the compact solid-state amplifier created by its recent acquisition, Midaz Lasers Ltd. Coherent also acquired
InnoLas on Oct. 30.
Startup to commercialize terabyte discs
As an alternative to storing data on energy-wasting magnetic discs or cumbersome magnetic tapes, a startup will use optical technology first developed at Case Western Reserve University to make an optical film with 64 data layers. The photo shows fluorescence images of 23 figures recorded in the multilayer medium. The upper left is the topmost layer and the lower right, the bottom-most layer. Each square is 22-μm-sq. Darker areas indicate reduced fluorescence (false color).
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Photonics
Prism Awards
finalists have
been announced. See our complete
coverage
at Photonics.com
1212LightSpeed.indd 22 12/3/12 4:52 PM
Light Speed•
See us at Photonics West, 5-7 February 2013, San Francisco, CA – Booth #331Sub-Miniature Resonant Scanner
A first-of-its-kind facility for the laser enrichment of uranium has received a license from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The license authorizes GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) to enrich uranium up to 8 percent by weight in the fissile isotope U-235.
“This is a seminal moment in the history of the nuclear industry,” said Dr. Michael Goldsworthy, CEO of Silex, the Australia-based company that developed the laser technology that will be used. “After more than 40 years of international research and billions of dollars invested by various governments and companies around the world in a race to achieve laser uranium enrichment, Silex and GLE are very proud to be the only successor in this incredibly challenging technological endeavor.”
This low-enriched uranium will be used in fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. GLE plans to construct the plant at the site of GE-Hitachi’s existing Global Nuclear Fuel-America’s fuel fabrication plant in Wilmington, N.C.
“The technology we’ve developed could be one of the keys to the nation’s long-term energy security,” said Chris Monetta, presi-dent and CEO of GLE. “At a minimum, it could provide a steady supply of uranium enriched right here in the US to the coun-try’s nuclear reactors,” which provide about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity.
Currently, most of the enriched ura-nium made to produce nuclear fuel in the US comes from foreign or government-supplemented sources. The GLE license will allow the production of up to 6 mil-lion single work units per year in the US, the company said.
The company said it has worked with the NRC, the US departments of State and Energy, and independent nonproliferation experts for several years to ensure that it met all regulations relevant to safeguard-ing the technology.
The company’s next step will be to make a decision about commercialization.
The NRC said its staff will conduct inspections during the construction and operation of the facility. The agency plans to hold a public meeting in Wilmington before construction begins to explain its oversight plans to the public.
NRC licenses laser enrichment facility
The global headquarters of GE Hitachi in Wilmington, N.C., employs more than 1500 professionals. The company specializes in boiling water reactor technology.
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Hita
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24 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – A high-power laser has amped up decades-old electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrometers to more efficiently study the world at the atomic level.
The multiuniversity team that enhanced the spectrometer has used it to study the electron spin of free radicals and nitrogen atoms trapped inside a diamond. The improvement pulls back the veil that shrouds the molecular world, allowing scientists to study tiny molecules at high resolutions, the investigators say.
EPR spectroscopy has existed for decades but has been limited by the electromagnetic radiation source it uses to excite electrons. Such electrons emit radiation that reveals details about the structure of targeted molecules. At EPR’s more powerful high magnetic fields and frequencies, pulses of power rather than continuous waves excite the targeted electrons.
Until recently, EPR spectroscopy was performed with a few tens of gigahertz of electromagnetic radiation. Now, using the free-electron laser (FEL) at the Univer-sity of California, Santa Barbara – which emits a pulsed beam of the radiation – scientists from UCSB, the University of Southern California and Florida State University have powered an EPR spec-trometer with 240 GHz of electromag-netic radiation.
“With FEL-powered EPR, we have shattered the electromagnetic bottleneck that EPR has faced, enabling electrons to report on faster motions occurring over longer distances than ever before,” said UCSB physics professor Mark Sherwin in a university release. The breakthrough could facilitate drug discoveries and more efficient polymer photovoltaics.
“In organic solar cells, light first cre-ates charge carriers, and these must be collected by electrodes for the energy to be harvested,” Sherwin told Photon-ics Spectra. “The charge carriers, called polarons, often don’t make it out to the electrodes but get trapped in the mate-rial. Using FEL-powered EPR, we plan to study the charge generation and trapping processes in devices at room temperature. If we can identify the trapping mecha-nisms and sites, then materials scientists
can work to eliminate them, leading to more efficient plastic solar cells.”
There is more to be done at 240 GHz, Sherwin said, but the team now has its sights set on 340 GHz.
“We are currently building a new FEL that will be optimized for pulsed EPR,” he said. “It will produce 100 times more power than the current FEL at 240 GHz, and pulse at 10 times the repetition rate with much greater stability. As far as the frequency, we are actually limited by the size of our magnet. Our existing 12.5-
tesla magnet will enable us to reach 340 GHz.”
The team also plans to attack a major obstacle: reducing the EPR spectrometer’s “dead time,” or time between when the FEL pulse arrives at the sample and when the detector is turned on.
“We are also investigating methods to generate more complex pulse sequences in which both the phase and amplitude of the FEL pulses are controlled,” Sherwin said.
Also in the works is a new class of “spin labels” – small molecules that can be attached to specific sites on proteins to study structures and dynamics – opti-mized for use at the high magnetic fields and frequencies used by the research-ers. The technology was developed with professors Song-I Han of UCSB, Dani-ella Goldfarb of Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and Adelheid Godt of the University of Bielefeld in Germany.
TECH pulse • • • • • • • •FEL fires new life into old technology
Above, an electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrometer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The device was used to study the electron spin of free radicals and nitrogen atoms trapped inside a diamond. Left, using UCSB’s free-electron laser, shown here, a multiuniversity team used 240 GHz of electromagnetic radiation to power an EPR spectrometer, yielding a more efficient tool for atomic-level studies.
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 25
“These new spin labels take advantage of the remarkable magnetic properties of gadolinium ions, which are currently used in agents that enhance the contrast of magnetic resonance imaging,” Sherwin
said. “With the new spin labels, we expect to be able to measure protein structure at physiological temperatures over signifi-cantly longer distances than is currently possible.”
The research, funded by the National Science and W.M. Keck foundations, ap-peared in Nature (doi: 10.1038/ nature11437).
Etching StepsWhat’s involved with monitoring the etching process? We asked assistant professor
Lynford L. Goddard of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to explain.
“For monitoring the etch, we first need to create a spatially coherent field. The phases at
different positions in the plane perpendicular to the beam need to have a constant relation.
We do this by coupling the light into a single-mode fiber and collimating the output. Next,
we attenuate the laser to a desired intensity level with a neutral density filter. Next, we pass
the laser light through a rotating piece of sanded polycarbonate so that we randomize the
laser speckle pattern. The collimated light enters the back port of the microscope and is
imaged onto the sample as a collimated beam. The light reflects off the sample and is im-
aged on an output port of the microscope. There, we place a grating with 300 grooves per
millimeter so that we create copies of the reflected field. We use a lens to perform an optical
Fourier transform. In the Fourier plane, we filter the copies of the reflected field. Next, we
use a second lens to invert the Fourier transform and interfere the two remaining beams at
the CCD camera. Finally, we perform a Hilbert transform in software to recover the phase
and amplitude of the reflected field from the recorded interferogram and convert the phase
signal into a height image.”
Semiconductor etching monitored in real time
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A nondestructive optical technique that simultaneously etches features onto a semiconductor wafer’s surface while monitoring the entire process in real time with nanome-ter precision could change the future of semiconductor etching.
Semiconductors are commonly etched chemically. Chip makers and researchers must precisely control the dimensions of their devices to avoid etching errors such as residual layers, which can affect performance, error rate, speed and time to failure.
The microscopy method, developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, uses two light beams, one from a 532-nm frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser to monitor, and the other from a color projector to sculpt the topography of a semiconductor’s surface with high precision. The work appeared in Light: Science & Applications (doi: 10.1038/lsa.2012.30).
“The idea is that the height of the structure can be determined as the light reflects off the different surfaces,” electri-cal and computer engineering professor Lynford L. Goddard said in a university release. “Looking at the change in height, you figure out the etch rate. What this allows us to do is monitor it while it’s etching. It allows us to figure out the etch rate both across time and across space, be-cause we can determine the rate at every location within the semiconductor wafer that’s in our field of view.”
Current techniques used, such as scan-ning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy, cannot monitor the etching in progress but can only compare it before and after. The new, low-noise method – which is inexpensive and fast – is purely optical, enabling noncontact monitoring of the entire semiconductor wafer at once rather than point by point.
A 3-D image of the University of Illinois logo etched into a gallium-arsenide semiconductor, taken during etching with a new microscopy technique that monitors the etching process on the nanometer scale. The height difference between the orange and purple regions is approximately 250 nm.
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Besides monitoring the process, the light acts as a catalyst for the process, called photochemical etching. Conven-tionally, light is shone through glass plates or masks that are patterned to let light through or to completely block it and thereby expose photoresist in a binary pattern before a separate etch step is per-formed. In the new technique, an ordinary
digital projector shines a gray-scale image onto the sample being etched; complex patterns can be created quickly and easily and can be adjusted using a computer.
The monitoring process also can be adapted to etch chips, Goddard told Pho-tonics Spectra.
“It can and has been adapted to etch the chips themselves,” he said. “As a proof-
of-concept example, we used the light from a digital projector to etch an array of microlenses. We simply drew a gradient shaded circle in Matlab and pasted it into a microlens array pattern in PowerPoint and displayed that image onto the sample in the etch solution to perform photo-chemical etching.”
This method holds promise for real-time monitoring of the self-assembly of carbon nanotubes, or for error monitoring during large-scale production of com-puter chips. It also may help chip makers decrease processing time and costs by allowing them to continuously calibrate their equipment.
“Monitoring self-assembly of carbon nanotubes could start very soon,” God-dard said. “Error monitoring during large-scale production would be about five years, since there would need to be many proof-of-concept experiments done first in a research environment before a large manufacturer would let us put a new tool into their fab line.”
Besides refining their work on photo-chemical etching, the team plans to work on “imaging the self-assembly of nano-tubes, the dissolution of biodegradable electronics, surface wetting and evapo-ration, the expansion of deformation of materials and finding isolated defects in patterned semiconductor wafers,” doctoral candidate Chris Edwards told Photonics Spectra.
Electrical and computer engineering professor Gabriel Popescu and gradu-ate student Amir Arbabi contributed to the results, which were supported by a National Science Foundation award and matching funds from the University of Illinois.
TECH pulse • • • • • • • •
Researchers at the University of Illinois used a special microscope to simultaneously etch tiny features in semiconductor wafers and monitor the process in real time. From left, graduate student Amir Arbabi, professor Gabriel Popescu, graduate student Chris Edwards and professor Lynford Goddard.
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Lasers have had a large role in visibility applications since the first commercial lasers became
available in the 1960s. Visible lasers today can be found in millions of applications, from medical to gun sights, alignment to simple pointing.
The red color spectrum has historically dominated the visible market, mostly due to the low entry cost. When you look closer at light visibility, it becomes clear that red light does not represent the best choice for visibility applications.
Understanding the spectrumThe first “spectrum” definition was released in the 17th century by Sir Isaac Newton. Newton examined how visible white light is made of a variety of colors that can be broken down using a prism. These colors travel at different speeds and contain different properties.
In 1802, Thomas Young took Newton’s research and began to analyze the properties of these wavelengths. He found that different wavelengths are perceived differently by the eye. His research discovered measurements on light perception that led to what we know now as the photopic scale.
The photopic scale defines visible light as wavelengths between 380 nm (violet) and 740 nm (red). The highest
visibility point in the scale comes at 555 nm (green).
Green wavelengths, it turns out, provide the highest amount of visibility among any of the common commercial laser wavelengths. In fact, green light at 555 nm is 4.6 times more visible than the most common visible red laser (635 nm).
Green SolutionsDespite the visible advantages with green lasers, red has been the dominant color in visible applications. In recent years, however, green has begun gaining momentum in visible applications.
Green lasers have until recently existed mostly as diode-pumped solid state (DPSS). DPSS green lasers have a typical wavelength of 532 nm, placing them close to the maximum visibility without sacrificing power. DPSS has become popular due to relatively
low cost. However, inexpensive DPSS lasers suffer from stability issues, poor durability due to the use of fragile crystals to produce the green light, and low portability due to size and high power requirements.
Green diode lasers overcome many of the issues from DPSS lasers at near the same level of visibility. Diodes feature increased durability in a better package that can be significantly smaller than DPSS and run on lower power for longer.
Until recently, green diode lasers have been significantly more expensive than DPSS, causing fewer applications to take advantage of the benefits of green diode lasers.
Better Green Diode LasersThis all appears to be changing as Power Technology has recently Power Technology has recently Power Technologyintroduced it's green laser diode line of products featuring the GPD diode laser module. This marks the first time that green laser diode modules have become available at a price at or below common DPSS modules.
The GPD green laser diode module features significant increases in power stability, thanks to an integrated photodiode. As a result of these significant advances in green laser diode technology, Power Technology has quickly risen as the industry leader in visible green laser applications.
PowerTechnology Media www.PowerTechnology.com/Green December 2012
Wavelength (nm)405450515530635780
Color
VioletBlue
GreenGreenRed
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Visibility of Specified Wavelength Compared to 555 nm (Green)
214.6x Less Visible21.4x Less Visible1.6x Less Visible1.2x Less Visible4.6x Less Visible
67,000x Less Visible
VISIBLELIGHT
Seeing Visible Light ClearlyVisible light makes up a large portion of laser applications. Are you using the best visible light available?
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28 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
STOCKHOLM – Two independent but re-lated quantum optics methods for measur-ing and manipulating individual particles while preserving their quantum mechani-cal nature have been recognized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics.
Serge Haroche of the Collège de France and Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and David Wineland of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder will share the $1.2 million (SEK 8 million) prize.
Although the research was developed separately over many years by teams in the US and France, the work of the win-ners is synergistic, the academy said.
“I use atoms to study photons, and he uses photons to study atoms,” Haroche said in a phone interview with Nobel prize.org of his and Wineland’s work. “He’s a friend, and I admire his work very much. We have been in contact with each other for many, many years. I am very glad to share this prize with him.”
The field of quantum optics, which deals with the interaction between light and matter, has seen considerable prog-ress since the mid-1980s. Because single particles are not easily isolated from their surrounding environment and lose their mysterious quantum properties as soon as they interact with the outside world, it was thought that direct observation could not be attained; researchers could only carry out “thought experiments” that might, in principle, manifest the bizarre phenomena.
Discoveries based on these experiments could eventually lead to the development of superfast quantum computers and could be used to make optical clocks that are at least 100 times more accurate than current-day cesium clocks.
“I think most of us feel that even though it is a long ways off before we can realize such a computer . . . it will eventually happen,” Wineland told Nobelprize.org in a phone interview. “It’s primarily a matter of controlling these systems better and better.”
Haroche and his wife were out walking when he received the call notifying him of the award
“I was ... getting ready to get back home,” Haroche said. “My first thought was amazement, you know. I think I had the thought even before I [answered] the phone because I saw the code 46 of Sweden. I knew that the prize was being given today.”
Wineland, in Colorado, was awakened by the phone call from the Nobel commit-tee. “We probably won’t go back to sleep for a while,” he said. “It’s a wonderful surprise, of course, and just amazing.”
When asked how the award would affect his future work, Wineland told Photonics Spectra that “the recognition will increase our credibility, which can never hurt. But I don’t think it will change my personal approach at all.”
TECH pulse • • • • • •
“You might say the
recognition will increase
our credibility, which can
never hurt. But I don’t think
it will change my personal
approach at all.”-Dave Wineland
Nobel Prize in physics recognizes quantum-world experiments
David Wineland Serge Haroche
1212TechPulse.indd 28 12/3/12 4:12 PM
December 2012 Photonics Spectra 29
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A wearable sen-sor system that includes a stripped-down gaming camera and a laser rangefinder could give emergency responders a hand by digitally mapping hazardous environ-ments on the fly.
Developed at MIT, the device builds on previous research into systems that let robots map their environments. The machine’s sensors wirelessly relay data to an off-site computer, allowing observers to watch the map’s creation as the wearer maneuvers through a space – in this in-stance, the halls of an MIT building. The prototype, worn on the chest, includes a simplified Microsoft Kinect camera and a laser rangefinder.
“The operational scenario that was envisioned for this was a hazmat situation where people are suited up with the full suit, and they go in and explore an envi-ronment,” said Maurice Fallon, a research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. “The current approach would be to textually summarize what they had seen afterward – ‘I went into this room on the left, I saw this, I went into the next room,’ and so on. We want to try to automate that.”
Originally designed for robots, the system has been adapted for the com-plexities of human use. For example, the laser rangefinder, which provides
accurate information about the distance of the nearest walls, is level on a robot but is jostled by a human in motion. In a robot’s wheels, sensors provide accurate information about physical orientation and distances covered, but that element is missing with humans. The system also must recognize changes in altitude when the wearer moves to a different floor.
Wearers can annotate the map using a handheld pushbutton attached to the sen-sor. In the prototype, it simply designates points of interest. The developers envision a future system that will add voice or text tags so emergency responders can mark structural damage or toxic spills.
The sensor was equipped with a cluster of accelerometers, gyroscopes and, in one group of experiments, a barometer.
“This idea of having a SLAM [simulta-neous localization and mapping] system that is attached to a human’s body, for figuring out where it is, is actually in-novative and pretty useful,” said Wolfram Burgard, a computer science professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany. “For first responders, a technology like this one might be highly relevant.”
The work, supported by the US Air Force and the Office of Naval Research, was presented in October at the Intel-ligent Robots and Systems conference in Portugal.
Wearable sensor maps disasters on the fly
A new sensor system that can be worn by first responders will allow them to digitally map dangerous places on the fly. The prototype sensor included a stripped-down Microsoft Kinect camera (top) and a laser range-finder (bottom), which looks something like a camera lens seen side-on.
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CAMBRIDGE, England – Holograms can be generated by harnessing the conductive and light-scattering qualities of carbon
nanotubes, a development that could lead to crisper projections with a larger field of view.
Many scientists believe that carbon nanotubes will be at the heart of future in-dustry and human endeavor, and will have an impact on solar cells, cancer treat-ments and optical imaging. One of the most astonishing features of nanotubes is that they are about 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight.
Researchers at Cambridge University’s Center of Molecular Materials for Photon-ics and Electronics (CMMPE) used these nanotubes as the smallest-ever scattering elements to create a static holographic projection of the word “Cambridge.”
“Smaller pixels allow the diffraction of light at larger angles – increasing the field of view. Essentially, the smaller the pixel, the higher the resolution of the hologram,” said Dr. Haider Butt of CMMPE, who conducted the work along with Yunuen Montelongo. “We used carbon nanotubes as diffractive elements – or pixels – to produce high-resolution and wide-field-of-view holograms.”
TECH pulse • • • • • • • •Nanotubes improve hologram projection
Cambridge University researchers used nanotubes as the smallest-ever scattering elements to project a static hologram of the word “Cambridge.”
Hai
der B
utt e
t al
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The multiwalled nanotubes used in this study are around 700 times thinner than a human hair and are grown vertically on a layer of silicon in an atomic chimney stack formation.
The researchers calculated a place-ment pattern that produced the name “Cambridge” using a variety of laser light colors, all of which were scattered from the nanoscale structures.
The holograms that resulted are not only of the highest resolution, but are also ultrasensitive to changes in material and incoming light, Butt said.
“A new class of highly sensitive
holographic sensors can be developed that could sense distance, motion, tilt, temperature and density of biological materials,” he said. What’s certain is that these results pave the way toward using nanostructures to produce 3-D holograms with a wide field of view and the very highest resolution, he added.
The scientists are now looking for a less expensive alternative to nanotubes, which are financially prohibitive. Among the candidates are zinc oxide nanowires.
The team is also investigating move-ment in the projections. Currently, only static holograms can be rendered; how-
ever, Butt and his colleagues will look at techniques such as combining these pixels with liquid crystals to create fluid displays – possibly leading to changeable pictures and even high-quality holo-graphic video.
The findings were reported in Advanced Materials (doi: 10.1002/adma.201202593).
TECH pulse • • • • • • • •
The DECam’s array of 62 CCDs has unprecedented sensitivity to red light.
“Essentially, the smaller the
pixel, the higher the resolution
of the hologram.”– Dr. Haider Butt, Cambridge University
CERRO TOLOLO, Chile – After eight years in the making, the most power-ful sky-mapping machine ever created, the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam), achieved first light on Sept. 12.
The camera was constructed at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Bata-via, Ill., and mounted on the Victor M. Blanco telescope at the National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the southern branch of the US National Optical Astronomy Observa-tory. With this device, roughly the size of a phone booth, astronomers and physicists will probe the mystery of dark energy, the force they believe is causing the universe to expand faster and faster.
A photometric imaging camera, it mea-sures the amount of light in various colors from astronomical objects rather than details of their spectra. It can see light from more than 100,000 galaxies up to 8 billion light-years away in each image. Its array of 62 CCDs has unprecedented sensitivity to red light.
Scientists in the Dark Energy Survey collaboration will use the camera to undertake the largest galaxy survey ever. They will use the data to carry out four probes of dark energy, studying galaxy clusters, supernovae, the large-scale clumping of galaxies and weak gravita-tional lensing. This will be the first time all four of these methods will be possible in a single experiment.
“The Dark Energy Survey will help us understand why the expansion of the universe is accelerating, rather than
slowing, due to gravity,” said Brenna Flaugher, project manager and scientist at Fermilab. “It is extremely satisfying to see the efforts of all the people involved in this project finally come together.”
Fermilab turned to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for the CCDs needed, real-izing that the high-redshift galaxies they sought would require longer exposures to get secure photometric results. Berkley Lab’s CCDs have higher quantum ef-
ficiency in the near-infrared than typical astronomical CCDs.
Manufacture of the DECam CCDs was overseen by Steve Holland, a senior engineer in Berkeley Lab’s Engineer-ing Div. who invented the Berkeley Lab CCD in the mid-1990s as a spinoff from research and development of detectors for high-energy physics.
“Fermilab was attracted to our CCDs because of their improved red response,” Holland said, “but considering that there were as yet no big cameras using them when DECam was planned, they had to decide to take a risk.”
The DECam chips were fabricated by Berkeley Lab’s industrial partner, Teledyne Dalsa Semiconductor, and the Physics Div.’s MicroSystems Laboratory. Partially finished wafers holding four CCDs, each with eight of 11 masking
Dark energy camera takes first pictures
The Dark Energy Camera features 62 charged-coupled devices, which record a total of 570 megapixels per snapshot.
Ferm
ilab
A zoomed-in image from the Dark Energy Camera of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, in the Fornax cluster of galaxies, which lies about 60 million light-years from Earth.
Dar
k En
ergy
Sur
vey
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steps completed, were commercially thinned, then sent to the MicroSystems Laboratory for completion. “Cold probe” tests at -45 °C were performed to detect shorts, defects and excessive dark current. The CCDs were cut from the wafer and sent to Fermilab for mounting and final testing of the science-grade devices.
The survey is expected to begin this month, after the camera is fully tested, and will take advantage of the excellent atmospheric conditions in the Chilean Andes to deliver pictures with the sharp-est resolution seen in such a wide-field astronomy survey. In just its first few nights of testing, the camera has delivered images with excellent and nearly uniform spatial resolution, astronomers say.
Over five years, the survey will create detailed color images of one-eighth of the sky, or 5000 square degrees, to discover and measure 300 million galaxies, 100,000 galaxy clusters and 4000 supernovae.
The most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam), is mounted on the Blanco telescope in Chile.
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MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL – The discov-ery that the force of light in a nanoscale switch is strong enough to move an opti-cal waveguide without having to rely on the device’s mechanical structure could dramatically increase Internet download speeds while also consuming less power.
The microscale optical device, de-veloped at the University of Minnesota, uses the force generated by light to flop a mechanical light-based switch on and off at very high speeds. This development could lead to advances in computation and signal processing using light instead of
electrical current. “This device is similar to electromechanical relays but oper-ates completely with light,” said Mo Li, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Science and Engineering.
Li and collaborators discovered in 2008 that nanoscale light conduits can be used to generate optical forces strong enough to mechanically move an optical waveguide. With their new device, they found that its mechanical properties can be completely dominated by the optical force.
“This is the first time that this novel optomechanical effect is used to amplify optical signals without converting them into electrical ones,” Li said.
Glass optical fibers carry many com-munication channels, each assigned a dif-ferent color of light so they don’t interfere with each other. This noninterference characteristic ensures the efficiency of a single optical fiber to transmit more infor-mation over very long distances. But this advantage also harbors a disadvantage: When considering computation and signal processing, optical devices could not allow the various channels of information
TECH pulse • • • • • • •Signals amplified by light alone
For more on Mo Li and his 2008
work on nanoscale light conduits,
see “Light Drives Nanomachines,”
www.photonics.com/a35732.
University of Minnesota researchers led by Mo Li have invented a novel microscale mechanical switch of light on a silicon chip. The team says the technology could dramatically increase Internet download speeds while also consuming less power.
Univ
ersi
ty o
f Min
neso
ta
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to control each other easily – until now. The new device has two optical wave-
guides, each carrying a signal. Placed between the waveguides is an optical resonator in the shape of a microscale doughnut. In the optical resonator, light can circulate hundreds of times, gaining intensity.
Using this resonance effect, the optical signal in the first waveguide is significantly enhanced in the resonator and generates a very strong optical force on the second waveguide. That waveguide is released from the supporting material so that it moves in oscillation, like a tuning fork, when the force is applied on it. This me-chanical motion of the waveguide alters the transmission of the optical signal. Because the power of the second optical signal can be many times higher than the control sig-nal, the device functions like a mechanical relay to amplify the input signal.
The new optical relay device currently operates 1 million times per second, but the researchers expect to improve it to
several billion times per second. The mechanical motion of the current device is sufficiently fast to connect radio-fre-quency devices directly with fiber optics for broadband communication.
Li’s team includes graduate students Huan Li, Yu Chen and Semere Tadesse, and former postdoctoral fellow Jong Noh. The project received funding from the University of Minnesota College of Sci-ence and Engineering and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
The results were published online in Nature Communications (doi: 10.1038/ncomms2103).
TECH pulse • • • • • • •
Electrons in QDs seen absorbing, emitting lightDRESDEN, Germany – The special energy states of electrons confined in quantum dots have been observed for the first time, a feat that could help exploit the unique properties of the nanoscale semiconductor materials for technological applications.
Because they are easy to synthesize and their behavior is akin to that of single atoms, quantum dots are generally consid-ered to hold great potential for technologi-cal applications. But to take advantage of these properties, scientists must first understand how the electrons trapped inside quantum dots absorb energy and emit it again as light.
There are typically one or two electrons inside the minuscule pyramid-like struc-ture of quantum dots. The constricted movement in the dots allows electrons to occupy only specific energy levels; these depend on the composition of the semiconductor material and the size of the nanopyramid.
Using scanning near-field microscopy, scientists from Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (IFW) and TU Dresden observed the special energy states of electrons confined in the dots.
“These sharply defined energy levels are exploited, for example, in highly energy-efficient lasers based on quantum dots,” said Dr. Stephan Winnerl of HZDR. “The light is produced when an electron drops from a higher energy level into a
Shining laser light onto a metallic tip less than 100 nm thick strongly collimates the light; focusing this collimated light precisely onto one pyramid allows energy to be donated to the electrons, exciting them to a higher energy level. The energy transfer can be measured by watching the IR light scattered from the tip in this process. Here, near-field microscopy using the free-electron laser at HZDR: An adjusting laser aligns the measuring tip of the microscope as it comes from above. Below, the movable sample stage is seen.
HZD
R
“We hope to gain even more
precise insights into the
confined behavior of these
electrons.”– Dr. Stephan Winnerl, HZDR
1212TechPulse.indd 36 12/4/12 11:25 AM
December 2012 Photonics Spectra 37
lower one. The energy difference between the two levels determines the color of the light.”
The Dresden researchers are the first to successfully scan transitions between energy levels in single quantum dots using infrared light. Since electrons in different-sized nanopyramids respond to different IR energies, it is possible to obtain only blurred signals by using IR light. For this reason, it’s important to view the electrons confined to a single quantum dot.
The new technique involves shining laser light onto a metallic tip less than 100 nm thick, which strongly collimates the light to 100 times smaller than the wavelength of light – the spatial resolu-tion limit for conventional optics. By focusing this collimated light precisely onto one pyramid, energy is donated to the electrons, exciting them to a higher energy level. The energy transfer can be measured by watching the IR light scattered from the tip in this process. The technique is sensitive enough to generate a distinct nanoscale image of the elec-trons inside a quantum dot.
“Next, we intend to reveal the behavior of electrons inside quantum dots at lower temperatures,” Winnerl said. “From these experiments, we hope to gain even more precise insights into the confined behav-ior of these electrons. In particular, we want to gain a much better understanding of how the electrons interact with one another as well as with the vibrations of the crystal lattice.”
The work appeared in Nano Letters (doi: 10.1021/nl302078w).
The two free-electron lasers at HZDR. The Dresden researchers are the first to use IR light to scan transitions between energy levels in single quantum dots.
Sven
Cla
us
Squeezed light measures moving targetTOKYO – A novel quantum mechani-cal squeezing technique that precisely tracks the phase of optical waveforms in motion has broken the standard limits for ultraprecise measurement by exploiting quantum lightwaves in a different way. In optical communications, information is often stored in a waveform or light pulse. Yet noise and fluctuations arise, causing random jitter in the phase and amplitude of optical pulses, making it difficult to keep track of waveform phase.
Squeezed light can be used to make measurements of very small distances, and now scientists at the University of Tokyo and Griffith University in Austra-lia have demonstrated that it is possible to take measurements even while the target is in motion.
“At the heart of all scientific endeavor is the necessity to be able to measure things precisely,” said professor How-ard Wiseman of Griffith University’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics. “By using squeezed light, we have broken the standard limits for precision phase track-ing, making a fundamental contribution to science.”
To achieve this “optical-phase track-ing method,” professor Akira Furusawa and project lecturer Hidehiro Yonezawa, both from the School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, exploited phase squeezed light (the phase noise of which is smaller than that of a laser beam) and a feedback control technique. Their find-ings beat the classical mechanical bound-ary of precision; more importantly, their
“At the heart of all scientific endeavor is the necessity
to be able to measure things precisely.”– Professor Howard Wiseman, Griffith University
1212TechPulse.indd 37 12/3/12 4:13 PM
www.photonics.com
TECH pulse • • • • • •
results reveal that, because of Heisen-berg’s uncertainty principle, a quantum mechanical limitation exists in highly precise optical-phase tracking.
“Because the phase of a light beam changes whenever it passes through or bounces off an object, being able to measure that change is a very powerful tool,” Wiseman said. Using squeezed light has enabled the researchers to push the boundaries of precision phase tracking. “But, we have also shown that too much squeezing can actually hurt,” he said.
“Curiously, we found that it is possible to have too much of a good thing,” said professor Elanor Huntington from UNSW Canberra, the director of the Austra-lian contribution to the experiment and Wiseman’s colleague in the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communica-tion Technology. “Squeezing beyond a certain point actually degrades the perfor-mance of the measurement, making it less precise than if we had used light with no squeezing.”
Wiseman has been working with Dr. Dominic Berry of Macquarie University on the theory of this problem for the past several years.
“The key to this experiment has been to
combine ‘phase squeezing’ of lightwaves with feedback control to track a moving phase better than previously possible,” Berry said. “Ultraprecise quantum-enhanced measurement has been done be-fore, but only with small phase changes. Now we have shown we can track large phase changes as well.”
The ultrahigh-precision phase measure-ments could stimulate many applied re-search applications such as ultraprecision length measurement, ultrahigh-capacity coherent optical communication and secure quantum cryptography.
The Tokyo-based research was con-ducted in collaboration with The Univer-sity of New South Wales, University of Queensland and Macquarie University, all in Australia.
The research appeared in Science (doi: 10.1126/science.1225258).
Photo of the experimental setup. Courtesy of Hidehiro Yonezawa.
1212TechPulse.indd 38 12/4/12 11:26 AM
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LEDs at 50“The Magic One” is ubiquitous
So ubiquitous, in fact, that three features in this issue mention Nick Holonyak’s invention 50 years after he demonstrated the first practical visible-spectrum
light-emitting diode. • His GE colleagues called it “the magic one” because of its visible light. Holonyak has called it the “ultimate lamp”
because “the current itself is the light.” • He said in an interview this year that he remembered thinking, “I know that I’m just on the front end,
but I know the result is so powerful. ... There’s no ambiguity about the fact that this has got a life way beyond what we’re seeing.”
• Applications for LEDs are booming: lighting in cellphone and smartphone displays, TVs, PCs, tablet computers and more, and they are going mainstream in general lighting applications.
• Polymer injection molding lends itself nicely to LEDs because of its ability to integrate optical elements into one part with mechanical features such as snaps, apertures, holes, barrels,
light pipes and mirrors. • Basic research has reset its focus on the semiconductor zinc oxide, which has a direct bandgap
comparable to GaAs and GaN, raising hope that one day blue LEDs will be made from this material. • One problem has prevented the use of ZnO: It is impossible to generate high, homogeneous
and stable p-type doping, reducing LED efficiency. • Digital line-scan sensors with 24-k resolution offer inspection
of fine defects at high throughput speed, useful in production inspection of LEDs and LCDs.
• Streak Cameras Improve Materials Research
• CMOS Sensors Increase Inspection Speed and Accuracy
• Plastic Optics Provide Precision
• Charge-Injection Devices Overcome Radiation Effects
• Surveillance System Enables 24-Hour Target Acquisition
this month’s FEATURES• • • • • • • •
1212FeatureIntro.indd 41 11/30/12 5:17 PM
Tech Feature
42 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
LEDs have numerous advan-tages over traditional light sources such as halogen or energy-saving lamps. They use electric power efficiently and, employed in combination with various-colored bod-ies, can be designed to provide an almost natural light. They are also completely jitter-free.
When today’s electronics light up, GaAs (gallium arsenide) and/or GaN (gallium nitride) are involved, which is not always a good thing. Gallium is rare – and priced accordingly – and the poisonous arsenic causes problems in disposal. GaN is a powerful but technologically difficult ma-terial to handle, resulting in a search for alternatives despite its high level of func-tionality. For research purposes and for in-dustrial production of electronic lighting, LEDs and laser diodes, finding cheap and environmentally friendly alternatives is important.
Basic research has reset its focus on the semiconductor zinc oxide (ZnO), which has a direct bandgap comparable to GaAs and GaN, raising hope that one day blue LEDs will be made from this material. Moreover, ZnO is available in quanti-ties suitable for industry and is inexpen-sive, nontoxic and simple to process. So far, however, one problem has prevented its use: It is impossible to generate high, homogeneous and stable p-type doping, which, at the moment, greatly reduces LED efficiency.
ZnO also shows potential as an active material for solid-state lasers. Recent de-velopments at the University of Leipzig Institute of Experimental Physics II, Semiconductor Physics Group, in Ger-many have shown that the threshold for ZnO microwires as an active material for lasers is 73 kW/cm2 at room temperature. But further research is needed to develop
ZnO LEDs and lasers for industrial-scale applications, and streak cameras are help-ing in this endeavor.
Streak cameras are used for time- resolved analysis of ultrashort optical sig-nals, and researchers at the University of
Bochum in Germany are using them to make phenomena visible, examining – among other things – the time-resolved photoluminescence of ZnO.
These cameras achieve temporal reso-lutions in the range of picoseconds (10210
New calibration options enable significant improvements in the accuracy of new and old devices, which could mean big advances in materials for LEDs and lasers.BY BARBARA STUMPPSCIENCE WRITER
Streak Cameras Improve Materials Research
The OptoScope streak camera from Optronis GmbH enables research into the temporal behavior of the photoluminescence of ZnO at the University of Bochum.
Opt
roni
s
1212StreakCameras.indd 42 11/30/12 5:17 PM
December 2012 Photonics Spectra 43
to 10212 s). Apart from their high tempo-ral resolution, streak cameras are the only instruments that allow simultaneous mea-surement of the temporal behavior of mul-tiple optical processes.
When measuring with a streak camera, the image of a slot is deflected at very high speed over a screen. If you know the de-flection speed, you can connect the infor-mation received from the position on the screen with a time axis. The deflection is technically realized by a streak tube. Streak tubes are vacuum tubes that work – as with first-generation image amplifier tubes – with a photocathode to convert the light flux into a current of electrons, focus-ing electrodes and a phosphor screen to re-convert it into optical signals. A peculiar feature of the streak tube is that additional baffles allow a shifting of the image on the phosphor screen; a CCD camera then re-cords the image.
In combination with a spectrometer, the streak camera can perform time-resolved spectroscopy. The camera’s high sensitiv-ity allows detection of even weak signals up to those of individual photons. Dr. Jan Heye Buß of Bochum University explores homoepitaxially grown zinc oxide using the OptoScope streak camera from Op-tronis GmbH of Kehl, Germany. The zinc oxide is activated by light of a wavelength of about 351 nm and an intensity of 10 to 12 mW. By visualizing the photon re-sponse, the research delves into the tempo-ral behavior of the photoluminescence of this material.
The measurement errors of the Opto-Scope’s spot velocity and its linearity are specified to 65 percent at maximum, but the delivered systems typically have presented an error of 2 to 3 percent. De-pending upon the system configuration, additional errors can occur because of geo-metric image distortions and the specific transit-time distortion. Despite these er-rors, the camera system already has deliv-ered good results for many measurement tasks without further corrections.
For materials research, the SC-10 streak camera from Optronis is used for mea-surements on ZnO, and the SC-20/SC-51 is generally used for detonics and laser Dop-pler interferometry.
“With the SC-20/SC-51, a correction of geometric image distortions (barrel, pincushion) is essentially helpful because the optical and electro-optical transmis-sion components in respect to the streak camera have to transfer a large image,” said Dr. Patrick Summ, CEO of Optronis.
The decay of a laser-excited ZnO sample. The X-axis shows the time elapsed (0 to 2 ns), and Y-axis shows the spectral information.
The vertical profile – i.e., the spectral information of the sample’s decay – shortly after laser excitation.
Basic research has
reset its focus on the
semiconductor zinc oxide
(ZnO), which has a direct
bandgap comparable to
GaAs and GaN, raising
hope that one day blue
LEDs will be made from
this material.
Dr.
Jan
Hey
e Bu
ßD
r. Ja
n H
eye
Buß,
Uni
vers
ity o
f Boc
hum
1212StreakCameras.indd 43 11/30/12 5:17 PM
44 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
“With the SC-10, this plays a minor role, as the image to be transferred is smaller by a factor of about 1.5 and, thus, the optical distortions are usually negligible.”
To make ZnO measurements, research-ers sometimes work with very fast signals that can be detected only at high sweep rates. Here, the photoelectron transit-time distortion of the streak tube becomes “vis-ible”: It makes itself noticeable therein, as parabolic distortion usually occurs from the center to the edge of the image. The reason for this is that the outer photoelec-trons travel a longer distance in the tube. In this case, a correction of this transit-time distortion makes sense.
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ZnO has shown potential as an active material for LEDs and solid-state lasers. Recent research has shown that the threshold for ZnO microwires as an active material for lasers is 73 kW/cm2 at room temperature. Here, ZnO microwires used during the tests at the University of Leipzig.
Prof
esso
r Mar
ius
Gru
ndm
ann,
Uni
vers
ity o
f Lei
pzig
In combination with
a spectrometer,
the streak camera
can perform time-resolved
spectroscopy.
1212StreakCameras.indd 44 11/30/12 5:51 PM
December 2012 Photonics Spectra 45
Streak cameras are used primarily in the field of basic research at universities and research institutes, and researchers need the best possible results because further research builds on these results; also, case-specific adjustments and the traceability of the determination of raw data are always relevant to research. To help researchers get the most from their results, the analy-sis software OptoAnalyse from Optronis offers simple and targeted calibration and correction functions.
The new software can enable correc-tion of the transit-time distortion of the photoelectrons and the geometric image distortions as well as the absolute and relative calibration of the sweep rate. An important issue in the implementa-tion of these correction and calibration functions has been that the calibrations are done by a process that is easy to un-derstand, Summ said. Transparent data processing leads to improved results. The user can thus decide in person which cor-rections are desirable, and the reference data can be directly accessed. The relevant measurements for the ZnO test results are
To make ZnO measurements, researchers sometimes work with very fast signals that can be detected only at high sweep rates, at which the photoelectron transit-time distortion of the streak tube becomes “visible” in the form of parabolic distortion; this can be corrected by the new software.
Opt
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thus available with an accuracy of 1 per-cent in range.
The development of future ZnO LEDs, new solid-state diode lasers and diode la-sers, and ever-more-exclusive application areas would have been impossible – and
cannot continue in the future – without basic research using streak cameras.
Meet the authorDr. Barbara Stumpp is a freelance journalist in Freiburg, Germany; email: [email protected].
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CMOS Sensors Increase Inspection Speed and AccuracyAs they get faster and offer higher resolution and sensitivity, CMOS sensors continue to impress the
manufacturing industry.
BY MARIE FREEBODYCONTRIBUTING EDITOR
The main goal of any industrial in-spection system is to increase manu-facturing efficiency as measured by
throughput, yield and number of product returns. Inspection systems are therefore pressed for continual improvements in speed, resolution and power consumption as well as capital cost.
Greater speed allows manufacturers to see physical characteristics when an object is moving very fast or is highly
magnified. Better resolution means higher spatial resolution and greater detail in the images, and increased light sensitivity means that this can be done with minimal investment in supplemental lighting.
“Image sensors are the eyes of opti-cal inspection systems,” said Eric Fox, technical director of CMOS integrated circuits at Teledyne Dalsa in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. “Without advances in the performance of image sensors, it is not possible to exploit parallel advances in illumination, data transmission, image-processing hardware and image-process-ing software.”
Of course, this applies to all image sensors, but in particular to those based on CMOS technology, as these are fast becoming the technology of choice for inspection.
“There are three characteristics of the sensor that we continue to advance: speed, resolution, sensitivity,” said Rick Robin-son, director of marketing at Vision Re-search, a high-speed digital camera maker in Wayne, N.J. “And these are engineer-ing trade-offs – it is nearly impossible to advance all three simultaneously. And all three can benefit inspection applications.”
But speed, resolution and sensitivity
CMOS sensors can help manufacturers inspect solar cells, LEDs, LCDs and more.
CMOS sensors offer increasingly high frame rates and are very attractive for high-speed applications.
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 47
aren’t everything: Other attributes also are helping to make CMOS sensors an increasing asset on the production line.
Global electronic shutters provide crisp, blur-free images of fast-moving objects without the need for a mechanical shutter or pulsed illumination. Reductions
in read noise and in the effects of shot noise also contribute to image quality – and in some cases can enhance the quality of the products. This can be seen, for example, in the solar panel market, where efficiencies continue to increase and costs continue to decrease over time.
“Teledyne Dalsa has been in the busi-ness of developing new and better image sensors to advance inspection capabilities for over 30 years. Throughout, the drivers have remained the same: Run faster, with more resolution, with higher sensitivity, at lower cost,” Fox said. “Over the past 10 to 15 years, power consumption has been added to that list of drivers as system sizes have scaled down in size.”
Most recently, the company has re-leased the Genie TS and Falcon2 CMOS sensor cameras for area-scan applications, the Piranha4 8k for line scanning and the Piranha HS NIR for time delay and integration (TDI) applications.
CMOS technology will be as successful in line-scan applications as it has been in area-scan applications, said Jana Bar-tels, product manager for digital camera manufacturer Basler AG in Hamburg, Germany. The company is putting a lot of effort into developing cameras with its partners Cmosis, Aptina Imaging Corp., Awaiba CH SA and e2v.
For example, the latest digital line-scan sensors with 24-k (24,576 pixels) resolu-tion from Awaiba of Yverdon, Switzer-land, offer inspection of fine defects at high throughput speed. This is particu-larly useful in the manufacturing of solar cell substrates, especially thin-film solar cells, and in production inspection of LEDs and LCDs.
CMOS technology will be as useful for line-scan applications as it has been for area-scan applications, according to the German company Basler, which is developing new cameras. Here, the Basler Ace area-scan cameras (left) are equipped with both CCD and CMOS sensor technology; the company’s Racer line-scan cameras (right) use highly sensitive CMOS sensor technology.
j Good full-well capacityj Small sensor sizes (which means smaller cameras)j High speedj High image quality (comparable to CCD technology)j No tap balancingj Global shutter when capturing moving objects (prior to CMOS, this was
possible only with more expensive CCD sensors)j Low noise resulting from new sensor developments j New special features such as windowing and high-dynamic-range
improvementsj Low system complexityj High sensitivity in the NIR spectrumj Less blooming than in CCD technologyj Less smear than in CCD technology (important when capturing
moving objects)j Extended functionality in one chipj Low power consumption
Basl
er
Higher speed, resolution and sensitivity are top goals at Vision Research, and the company says CMOS will help it achieve those goals. This picture of the Miro M-series camera without the lens reveals the CMOS sensor beneath.
Visi
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The merits of CMOS sensors, at a glance:
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48 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
n CMOS Sensors
“A completely different product inno-vation is our world-smallest global shutter sensor, NanEye_GS, which provides in a form factor of only 3.4 3 3.4 mm a global shutter sensor that can deliver 100 full images per second at 640 3 640-pixel resolution,” said Awaiba CEO Martin Wäny. “The sensor is ideal for compact vision systems such as data matrix code readers or intelligent light barriers.”
The rise and rise of CMOSState-of-the-art CMOS image sensor
(CIS) technology is reaching a point where its overall performance is com-parable to that normally expected from CCD-based image sensors.
And some believe that CIS technology also is nipping at the heels of broadband
and image intensifier devices such as those based on microchannel plates, photo- multiplier tubes or similar technologies.
“Many of the cameras launched in the past year or two have been CMOS, and if you examine what is cooking in the R&D labs of most companies, you’ll find it is almost entirely CMOS,” Teledyne Dalsa’s Fox said. “Thus, for machine vision, I think the transition has hap-pened, with the exception of TDI. We still sell a lot of TDI products because the architecture that CCDs allow is so ideally suited to the application.”
Although the image quality of CMOS image sensors has improved tremendous-ly over the past 10 years, some off-chip digital processing is still necessary to get the best from the resulting image.
More and more of this will be inte-grated on chip so that CMOS image sen-sors will become easier for the customer to use.
This added functionality is one of the most important requirements for future CMOS sensors, according to officials at Sony Corp., where the sensors and modules are developed in a vertically integrated fashion, which it says provides customers with added value that is unique to Sony.
Developing superresolution zoom and a low-power autofocus actuator will
enable advanced functionality and lower power consumption, the company said.
Sony has just released the Exmor RS. The conventional back-illuminated CMOS image sensor has the sensor and circuit sections on the same plane, with one section laid on the other on the sup-porting substrate of a silicon wafer.
Putting a circuit inside the supporting substrate uses that substrate more effec-tively, making the 1⁄4-inch system-on-chip image sensor about 40 percent smaller, the company said. Previously, sensor and logic – two incompatible processes – had to be built on the same plane; now that they can be separated, the conditions for each can be optimized, which Sony says enables better performance and image quality.
Modern inspection applications increasingly use spectral information to detect defects.
The Falcon2 area-scan camera from Teledyne Dalsa has an 8-megapixel CMOS sensor. The company cites speed, sensitivity, resolution and lower cost as driving factors behind innovation in CMOS image sensors.
The NanEye CMOS image sensor has optics integrated into the package. Measuring just 1 3 1 3 1.4 mm, this module comprises a full digital camera functionality and works without any additional components at up to 3 m on a wire.
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orp.
Awai
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“Image sensors
are the eyes of
optical inspection
systems.” – Eric Fox, Teledyne Dalsa
Imaging modules incorporating Sony’s Exmor RS, the world’s first stacked CMOS image sensor. Its sensor section and circuit section are laid one on the other on a silicon wafer supporting substrate.
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 49
Future challengesAlong with the usual suspects of speed,
resolution, sensitivity, image quality and power, we can expect to see advances in color imaging and in extending spectral responsivity to wavelengths outside the visible spectrum; today’s inspection appli-cations increasingly make use of spectral information to detect defects.
Huge efforts also are being made to further decrease noise floors of the CIS, which increases its dynamic range and takes us a step closer to single-photon detection abilities.
“Nevertheless, if all the advantages of the mature CMOS technology are to be preserved, this can only be done through the integration of other detector materi-als into the CIS fabrication processes,” said Dr. Daniel Durini, group manager of Optoelectronic Devices at Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems in Duisburg, Germany. “This approach takes us into the world of 3-D hybrid sensors, where several layers of detector materials and readout circuits are integrated together, offering a complete new world of possibilities not existent so far.”
Near-single-photon counting with picosecond time resolution has been one of the main breakthroughs of the past couple of years, presented in the form of SiPM (silicon photomultipliers) or SPADs (single-photon avalanche diodes).
These technologies are very promising but still have many drawbacks, Durini said. The drawbacks include pixel sizes, dark count rates, dead times and fill fac-tors in the case of SPADs, and the absence of spatial resolution, in the case of SiPMs. They all must be solved before commer-cialization is possible.
Three-dimensional imaging or high-performance ranging based on the time-of-flight principle also has made huge advances.
There are several competitors on the market right now, all waiting for the big breakthrough that could be coming soon, Durini said. “If sufficiently mature and advanced, this technology might open an enormous new world of uses, especially where machine vision and industrial ap-plications are concerned.”
The Genie camera from Teledyne Dalsa features a 1.4-megapixel, 100-fps CMOS sensor packaged on FR4 material to help minimize cost.
Tele
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“There are three characteristics of the sensor that we
continue to advance: speed, resolution, sensitivity.” – Rick Robinson, Vision Research
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50 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Plastic Optics Provide PrecisionPolymer optics are taking everyday applications by storm,
thanks to advances that make plastic
more and more competitive with glass.
BY VALERIE COFFEYSCIENCE WRITER
Polymer optics have long been known for being inexpensive and low in optical quality. The ease of high-
volume, low-cost manufacturing meant that just a few decades ago, consumers would find them primarily in disposable toys, diffraction-grating glasses and $5
film cameras. As materials, engineering design and tooling improved between the mid-1990s and the middle of the past de-cade, plastic grew to be common in more high-end optical applications, including fiber optics, biomedical devices, biometric scanning, and the displays and devices used in defense and homeland security.1
This flexibility of plastic optics is in large part the result of polymer optics manufacturers using sophisticated
injection-molding and -testing techniques. Injection molding allows a polymer to be replicated from a master or metal inserts into complex optics such as Fresnel lenses, aspheres, toroids, free-form and micro-optics in a cost-effective, high-volume process (Figure 1).2
Specifying plasticWhen it comes to thermoplastics, the
specifications are the same as for glass.
Figure 1. Thermoplastic molding pellets, the source material for injection molding, are melted to form finished molded lenses for numerous everyday applications, from cellphone cameras to LED lens assemblies.
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 51
Designers must call out the dimensions, surface accuracy, index of refraction, Abbe number and transmission character-istics. They also must consider inherent autofluorescence characteristics and likely stress birefringence. Surface coating selection depends on the spectral environ-mental conditions of the application.
Whether a design uses plastic or glass, however, depends upon understanding the widely varying strengths of glass and plastic, according to Scott Cahall, presi-dent of the optical design firm Moondog Optics Inc. in Fairport, N.Y. Glass comes in a wide variety of materials that can be chosen to optimize properties such as high refractive index, low dispersion or transmission over a broad spectrum. Glass enables tighter tolerances on mate-rial properties, while featuring a lower coefficient of thermal expansion and change of index with temperature (dn/dT) compared with plastic. Glass offers more resistance to surface abrasion and heat than plastic.
Besides being “formable” into unique optical elements such as double-sided microlens arrays and prisms with optical power (Figure 2), strengths of plastic in-clude the ability to incorporate significant departures from spherical surfaces, which facilitates aberration correction and re-duces element count, Cahall said. Plastic has a low mass compared with glass for a given optical power and can weigh up to five times less. A big advantage of plastic optics is that they can incorporate built-in features for mounting or other functional-ity, potentially eliminating parts from an assembly. Whereas glass is created in
As applications for LEDs grow, the low-cost and high-volume potentials
of polymer become more important.
Figure 2. Complex polymer optics design: A double-sided plastic microlens array combines the injection mold-ing specialty of Jenoptik Polymer Systems with the design and manufacturing expertise of the micro-optics unit of Jenoptik Optical Systems Inc. in Huntsville, Ala. The gray-scale lithography-generated glass master is used to create an electroformed negative, which is then used as the mold insert. Proprietary tooling allows for accurate alignment of the front and back sides of the mold.
Figure 3. Everyday applications: The MS-820 bar-code scanner, designed and manufactured by Microscan Systems Inc. of Renton, Wash., involves numerous plano-optical surfaces on a polygonal mirror, integrated with a mounting datum into one part.
“The optimal choice
depends on the details
of the application.
Both plastic and glass
will continue to be used
for the foreseeable future.”– Scott Cahall, Moondog Optics Inc.
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52 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
n Plastic Optics
small batches at best, plastic has cost-ef-fective scalability up to mass-production volumes.
“The decision when to use polymers is an engineering consideration, no differ-ent from deciding which type of glass to use,” said William S. Beich, director of sales and marketing at G-S Plastic Optics in Rochester, N.Y. “It depends on the application, and in some cases, the ability of the designer to compensate for the shortcomings of the material.”
Recent advancesIn the past decade, plastic optics have
exploded into a wide range of everyday applications including LED lenses, optical scanners, cellphone cameras and displays. Injection molding advances have greatly improved the optical quality of plastics so that they are becoming more common in growing nonconsumer markets such as medical equipment, biometrics and sensing.
Polymer injection molding lends itself nicely to LEDs because of its ability to integrate optical elements into one part with mechanical features such as snaps, apertures, holes, barrels, light pipes and
mirrors (Figure 3), said Andreas Maahs, site manager of polymer operations at Jenoptik Polymer Systems GmbH in Jena, Germany. “Combining several optical features in one component allows smaller unit sizes and eliminates the need for an optical alignment assembly, which im-proves replicated tolerance, unit manufac-turing cost and nonrecurring expenses.”
Applications for LEDs are booming. “LED lighting is a huge and growing market for polymer optics,” Beich said. “The advantages of using polymer optics comes from the ability to replicate very complex shapes in a cost-effective man-ner, using injection molding.” With the incorporation of LEDs into low-cost, efficient illumination everywhere, on the street, in buildings and in mobile ambient applications such as in trains, planes and automobiles, the high volume and low cost of polymer are key.
Zeon Corp., a Tokyo-based supplier of optical-grade polymers, recently announced the development of a high-transparency thermoplastic resin called Zeonex K26R, specifically for use in smartphone- and tablet-PC camera lenses. This material enables a 50 percent thinner
lens element compared with conven-tional lenses used in mobile imaging applications, while still maintaining low birefringence (Figure 4).3
“This new plastic reportedly enables a lens only 0.15 mm thick, which is amaz-ingly thin,” Cahall said.
Glass manufacturing also has made advances in recent years, according to Jenoptik’s Maahs. “The equipment used in precision glass molding technology has been very innovative, especially in high-volume manufacturing. Aspherical surfaces can be replicated at more reason-able costs than ever. Even some limited integrated features can be accomplished, although not with the same degree of freedom as with polymer.”
Recent advances in testing and quality-assurance capabilities ensure the quality of plastic. At G-S Plastic Optics, an OGP Smart Scope optical coordinate measur-ing system checks the mountings and assembly fiducials on molded products, holes and planar-shaped surfaces. Another high-performance coordinate measuring system certifies dimensional accuracy and product uniformity. Aspheric and other surface shapes are characterized using high-resolution stylus profilom-etry technology and phase-measuring laser interferometry in conjunction with computer-generated holograms. And the sphericity and irregularity of spherical optical surfaces such as mold inserts and molded optics are measured using phase-measuring laser interferometry (Figure 5).
‘A matter of physics’Knowing that polymer keeps making
inroads into glass quality territory, will polymer optics ever completely replace glass in the photonics world?
No, agree the experts. “It’s a matter of physics,” Beich said.
Plastics with significant aspheric departure are useful for aberration cor-rection, but various types of materials are limited in plastic. Glass has the advantage of many material options, which is also useful for aberration correction.
“Clearly, plastic does and will continue to dominate for some applications such as cellphone cameras, disposable medical apps and any case where surface shapes are not conducive to glass fabrication,” Cahall said. “The optimal choice depends on the details of the application. Both
Future applications of polymer optics include laboratory instruments, advanced optical data
networking and optical computing.
Figure 4. New materials: The new Zeonex K26R polymer resin, designed for microlens applications such as camera optics for smartphones and tablets, enables high-precision molding of thin cross-section lenses with significant reduction in weld line size and lower birefringence compared with traditional resins.
Zeon
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plastic and glass will continue to be used for the foreseeable future.”
And sometimes they’ll be used together in polymer-glass hybrid optical systems. Polymer optics can be combined in sys-tems with glass optics to take advantage of the benefits of both.
“An appropriate glass lens can be used to correct chromatic aberrations,” Beich said, “while the aspheric polymer lenses in the system can be used to correct for spherical and other aberrations. Such an arrangement also takes advantage of the fact that one can replicate aspheric surfaces very efficiently by injection-molding the optic.”
“I believe hybrid systems have a strong future,” Cahall said. “In many applica-tions, they provide a preferred balance of cost and performance versus what’s possible with all-glass or all-plastic solu-tions.”
Whether a design calls for straight-up polymer optics or a polymer-glass hybrid system, consulting an experienced specialist in polymer optics is critical. “I think [optical design pioneer] War-ren Smith said it best,” Beich said: “ ‘In considering a venture into the plastic optics arena, one is well-advised to seek
out a specialist in making plastic optics. Not only is the typical injection molder incapable of making good optics, but he or she also has no conception of what is required to do so.’ ” 4
The plastic futureWhere will polymer optics go in the
next five to 10 years? It will continue to be a key enabling technology for labora-tory instruments, LED illumination appli-cations, and small, portable, lightweight devices in a wide spectrum of markets, Beich said. “For example, we have cus-tomers who are employing sophisticated spectrometry techniques that were once used only in laboratories. Because of advances in the science, what was once a lab-based instrument can now be carried around by a user.”
Also, developments in advanced optical data networking and optical computing will definitely benefit from polymer opti-cal solutions, Maahs said.
“We will certainly continue to see plas-tics in high-volume imaging and nonim-aging applications,” Cahall said. “Imag-ing systems in particular are increasingly becoming high-end. Cellphone cameras today, for example, typically offer greater
than 5 megapix and are generally all plastic. The goal will be to push the lenses to even higher quality – no surprise. At the same time, we will continue to see the scale of lenses pushed smaller.
“Also, the number of consumer and medical applications where we see optical sensors and cameras will grow. This will be good for plastics and the optics indus-try in general.”
Meet the authorFreelance science and technology writer and editor Valerie C. Coffey is the founder of Stel-lar Editorial Services in Boxborough, Mass.; email: [email protected].
References1. P. Tolley (October 2003). Polymer optics
gain respect. Photonics Spectra, pp. 76-79.2. J.G. Smith et al (2008). High efficiency
micro-optics for illumination in projection systems. White paper. Mems Optical Inc.
3. http://www.zeonex.com/press/ZeonexK26R.asp.
4. W.J. Smith (2000). Modern optical engineer-ing: The design of optical systems. 3rd ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, p. 190.
Figure 5. Advanced testing: The sphericity and irregularity of spherical optical surfaces such as mold inserts and molded optics are measured using phase-measuring laser interferometry.
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Tech Feature
54 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
In imaging devices, radiation normally affects certain key parameters – gate threshold voltage, field/channel stop threshold voltage, charge transfer efficiency, dark current and noise – but a charge-injection-device (CID) imager can overcome these radiation effects.
A CID is a broadband (200 to 1100 nm) charge-transfer-device (CTD) image sen-sor with capabilities very different from those of typical commercially available charge-coupled devices (CCDs), CMOS and active pixel sensors. CTDs, includ-ing the CID imager, use hundreds of thou-sands – up to 4 million – pixel elements to capture optical images and convert the light into an electronic charge that can be displayed on a monitor or captured and processed by a computer.
The CID imager differs from other CTDs in that its architecture can be con-figured as a radiation-hardened device that operates reliably in a wide range of radiation environments beyond the typical lifetime of CCD- or CMOS-based cameras – in some cases, by orders of magnitude.
The CID also can be configured as a random-access CID device capable of ran-domly addressing individual pixels and in-terrogating pixel charge nondestructively for higher signal quality and extended lin-ear dynamic range for scientific imaging applications.
Gate threshold voltageIonizing radiation causes positive
charge to accumulate in the MOS (metal-oxide semiconductor) transistor gate oxide, which reduces the gate and field volt-age thresholds in N-channel transistors. Also, the drain-source standoff voltage decreases as radiation exposure increases. If the accumulated radiation is sufficiently high, the transistor will turn on perma-nently and cease to function as a switch. This type of device will short out. Con-versely, when P-channel transistors are exposed to radiation, the threshold voltage (Vth) becomes more negative; therefore, a more negative voltage is required to turn on the transistor. This shortcoming of the P-channel transistor allows it to be con-trolled as an “on” or “off” switch.
Typical commercially available CCD imagers are fabricated using N-channel technology; consequently, exposure to radiation causes the CCD register pho-togates to “turn on” into one continuous channel, and the devices short out. This catastrophic failure may occur in as little as 10- to 20-krads total ionized dose to gamma (60Co) exposure.
Radiation-hardened CIDs are fabri-cated using P-channel technology and will continue to function in radiation en-vironments. Pixel and logic operation is extended well into the megarad range by sensing the Vth shifts that occur on the de-vice and dynamically adjusting the image sensor drive voltages to compensate for the resulting shift in gate threshold. The CID design, speed of operation and choice of process determine the limits of operation.
Channel stop threshold voltageThe positive charge that accumulates
because of ionizing radiation in the field oxide regions that isolate MOS transistors causes a channel to form and to couple un-related N-channel transistors and photo-pixel structures; this makes them short out in as little as 10 to 20 krads total-dose gamma (60Co).
But, conversely, the isolation present in the P-channel CID radiation-hardened devices improves between unrelated tran-sistors and photo-pixels, and the CID will continue to function in significant radia-tion levels to a minimum of 3 Mrads, or 3 3 106 rads total-dose gamma (60Co).
Charge transfer efficiencyIncomplete lattice bonds are formed at
the surface of the silicon substrate be-cause of the lack of silicon neighbor atoms. These bonds are usually com-pleted using a hydrogen-annealing pro-cess. High-energy radiation can easily displace silicon atoms, disrupt the hydro- gen-annealed bonds, and the bond loca-tions become “traps” for photon-generated charge. These surface traps also degrade devices’ temporal noise and thermally generated dark current.
For the case of a large-surface chan-
An industry expert offers a primer on the advantages of charge-transfer-device imagers.BY TONY CHAPMANTHERMO FISHER SCIENTIFIC
Charge-Injection Devices Overcome Radiation Effects
Charge-transfer devices use up to 4 million pixel elements to capture optical images and convert the light into an electronic charge.
Total-dose-radiation
tolerance depends on
factors including duty
cycle; type of radiation
(gamma ray, x-ray,
neutron); typical dose rate;
ambient temperature;
and, by some accounts,
wafer-to-wafer process
variations.
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nel CCD that might require 1000 charge transfers through a charge-coupled shift register, a transfer efficiency of 99.5 per-cent would result in 0.7 percent of the final signal charge read out at the output preamplifier. For a similar “buried chan-nel” CCD, a charge transfer efficiency of 99.9995 percent would result in 99.5 percent of the final signal charge read out at the output preamplifier. Because of this issue, any charge transfer problem of a CCD is circumvented through the use of a buried channel. However, exposure to ionizing radiation significantly increases
the trap density in the buried channel CCD device, which, in turn, lowers charge transfer efficiency, causing the visible scintillation noise most commonly seen with CCDs.
Similar to a CCD, the CID sensor also experiences degradation of charge trans-fer efficiency when exposed to radiation. However, unlike the CCD structure, the reduced charge transfer efficiency has minimal impact on the performance of the CID sensor. The charge readout is achieved using a single charge transfer occurring within the individual CID pixel
structure itself, so the pixel charge is not shared with entire rows or columns as it is with CCDs. Therefore, charge transfer ef-ficiency is typically not an issue with CID devices until significantly higher damag-ing radiation flux rates.
NoiseA function of trap density, 1/f noise
increases dramatically with ionizing radiation and higher temperature. Opti-mizing the silicon process helps to mini-mize the generation of charge traps in the CIDs. Using the advantages of correlated
When commercially available CCD imagers are exposed to radiation, the CCD register photogates “turn on” into one continuous channel, and the devices short out. This can occur with total-dose gamma (60Co) exposure as low as 10 to 20 krads. Here, images from a commercial CCD camera and the standard CID8825DX6 camera when exposed to a gamma source (60Co): a and b show the CCD and charge-injection-device (CID) imagers, respectively, with no radiation exposure. Image c shows deterioration in the CCD image after just 1 h of radiation exposure, but the CID image in d is much less affected after 45 h of exposure.
a b
c d
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double sampling also can help reduce the effect of low-frequency 1/f noise.
In CIDs, gamma- and neutron-impact-induced noise is minimized by reducing the thickness of the “active” layer; how-ever, in high-radiation flux rates (.100 krads/h), some scintillation or random noise in the image may be observed on Thermo Fisher Scientific’s MegaRAD series imagers that may not be present in the passive-pixel version radiation-hardened CID imagers. This series of cam-eras exhibits higher light sensitivity and higher total-dose capabilities. The signifi-cantly increased light sensitivity means that the primary noise exhibited in these
devices is the result of individual ionizing energy loss (IEL) radiation events striking and being detected within the associated pixel sites.
Dark current Dark current, which is also a function
of trap density, increases dramatically with radiation and higher operating tem-perature. Lowering the operating tempera-ture by using a Peltier, or thermoelectric, cooler and optimizing the silicon process can help minimize the dark current.
Total-dose toleranceThe camera is designed to compensate
for the Vth shifts in the image sensor. This is achieved by driving the imager circuitry at biases as determined by an empirically generated algorithm. Nonionizing energy loss (NIEL) can lead to bulk damage such as displacement of silicon atoms in the silicon; NIEL-induced damage introduces permanent defects that are the primary cause of elevated dark current and poor charge transfer efficiency after exposure to radiation. A thermoelectric cooler can compensate for the increased dark current resulting from NIEL to maintain operating temperature at 25 °C, even at elevated am-bient temperatures up to 50 °C.
Total-dose-radiation tolerance is depen-dent upon numerous factors, including but not limited to duty cycle; type of radiation (gamma ray, x-ray, neutron); typical dose rate; ambient temperature; and, by some accounts, silicon wafer-to-wafer process variations.
Duty cycle is among the most impor-tant factors. The extent and severity of radiation damage is much greater when the camera is under power than when it is powered down. Therefore; a camera pow-ered and operated for only brief intervals on a daily or weekly basis will have a longer lifetime in radiation environments than one operated continuously.
Based upon the typical MegaRAD im-ager Vth shifts and the bias/drive voltage adjustment range, with 100 percent duty cycle – i.e., with the camera always pow-ered and running – as tested with a 60Co (gamma) source, these cameras will con-tinue to function to at least a total-dose ex-posure of 3 3 106 rads (total-dose gamma). The cameras, available with either mono-chrome or color output, exhibit sensitivity and noise performance on par with typical commercial CCD/CMOS cameras.
Meet the authorTony Chapman is sales and marketing director of CIDTEC cameras and imagers in the Chemi-cal Analysis Div. at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Liverpool, N.Y.; email: tony.chapman@ thermofisher.com.
Charge-Injection DevicesTech Feature
1/f noise increases dramatically with ionizing radiation and higher temperature.
A CID is a broadband (200 to 1100 nm) charge-transfer-device image sensor that uses hundreds of thousands of pixel elements – up to 4 million – to capture optical images and convert the light into an electronic charge. Here, the structure of a CID image sensor.
For more information on charge-injection devices, see Tony Chapman’s article on detectors in the Photonics Handbook, viewable online at http://www.photonics.com/a25130.
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 57
Surveillance System Enables 24-Hour Target AcquisitionA new multidetector system uses multiple-wavelength
sensors and lasers for rangefinding, target spotting
and target illumination.
BY JOHN STAPLESDEFENCE VISION SYSTEMS
Multisensor detectors can be of great use to surveillance systems, whether they use intensified
CCD, CMOS, InGaAs/short-wave infra-red or long-wave infrared. These may be stand-alone systems or may incorporate a laser rangefinder, laser designator or laser illuminator.
Modern surveillance should be able to detect and identify a specific target. Detecting a target or threat and then measuring the range to it, or illuminating it, generally requires a good multiwave-length surveillance system.
However, no matter how good the sys-tem, battlefield conditions or the weather can defeat its ability to meet these requirements. Thermal systems are excel-lent at detection but often have difficulty with identification; therefore, many of today’s systems use various forms of laser illumination, continuous wave as well as gated, to identify or designate the target.
To date, these have tended to be used in conjunction with visible-band sensors working at 400 to 900 nm. Most of these lasers work around the 800- to 900-nm region or at 1064 nm. The most intensified night-vision devices can see the former wavelengths, but the current range of in-service sensors cannot see the latter.
Available systems generally use the laser as a means of increasing the light on and around the target, either for aiding identification or designating a building or person, or for range measurement. In
range measurement, the lasers again tend to be at 1064 nm, and because no sensor can see this wavelength, the user must rely on system collimation to ensure that the laser is on the target. This means that, while effectively firing the laser blind, the user must have faith that the collimation is good.
A new solution combines a visible-band sensor and a near-infrared sensor in a series of devices incorporating lasers for rangefinding, target spotting and target illumination.
The first such system developed is the DVS STAS24 (surveillance target acquisition system) from Defence Vision Systems. It incorporates a high-resolution visible-band sensor operating from 400 to 900 nm, plus a low-resolution near-infrared sensor operating from 900 to 1700 nm, together with an eye-safe laser operating at 1550 nm. The two sensors and the laser are integrated into a single system that can provide images in light-
ing conditions from full sunlight down to starlight, together with a GPS and electronic compass system.
The system uses a custom lens from Davin Optronics Ltd. of Watford, UK, which designs and manufactures lenses for the defense market. The optical com-pany developed an objective lens for the STAS24 that provides excellent images for the combined wavelengths from 400 to 1700 nm over a 24-hour period.
With a single 24-hour system, there is no need to swap from a day system that cannot work at night to a night system that cannot work in the day. This reduces training time and increases ease of use; it also reduces the amount of kit needed, the need for spares, the cost, and the space needed to fit the system into airborne and armored-vehicle applications. Safety is increased because users are not blind while the day system is switched to the night system.
By keeping the image optimized over
These two images were taken using the InGaAs/short-wave infrared camera of the DVS STAS24 system in bright light on a May midafternoon with no clouds. The laser is clearly visible as a square on the side of the barn and the house in the distance.
Images courtesy of Defence Vision Systems
Laser illumination sources to date tend to be paired with visible-band sensors working at 400 to 900 nm …
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58 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
n Surveillance System
the full wavelength range and providing sharp images during the 24-hour period, we do not have to change lenses when moving from day to night. Most lenses are optimized only for a small bandwidth – for example, closed-circuit television lenses are generally optimized for 400 to
600 nm, and some offer 400 to 900 nm. Combining these diverse wavelengths into a single merged and scaled image, viewed by the user through a single-chan-nel eyepiece, enables better surveillance for various applications.
More importantly, this merged image includes the laser spot on the target, for the first time eliminating the guesswork as to its location.
The system incorporates a GPS together with an electronic compass to provide the user with location coordinates and heading. The data from the diverse imag-ing sensors is seen as a combined image with the range information, GPS data and compass heading visible above and below the main image.
The system features straightforward three-button operation, with the buttons being system on/off, zoom (standard magnification 113 with electronic zoom to 443) and laser fire.
The laser’s wavelength is 1550 nm, and the user can specify at time of order from three power levels that provide maximum
ranges of 2, 4 or 8 km. To ensure eye safety, the laser has a 10-second-delay default mode between operations.
At the system’s heart is a small but powerful computer, so it would be pos-sible to record each use of the laser and the data derived. This recording would be in the form of a video showing the image of the target and the data surrounding that image. In the current climate of retrospec-tive evaluation and analysis of events, such a system would provide a clear identification and record.
Future developmentsAdditional versions of the STAS24
are planned for 2013. Initially, these will involve alternative 1550-nm laser formats that will enable systems incorporating laser illuminators and laser spotters. These formats will exploit the major advantage of the system by providing the user visible illumination of the 1550-nm wavelength.
Alternative system configurations could include armored vehicle- and airborne gimbal-mounted applications.
The system is not large or power-hun-gry, so it offers an ideal retrofit to smaller existing armored vehicles. It could be used in conjunction with low-resolution thermal systems to help identify the target. It also would be possible to incor-porate a low-resolution thermal sensor and include the input from this as part of the merged image. The system could be mounted in a bolt-on armored housing with just the wires for power, control and image penetrating the armor of the vehicle; the gimbal-mounted version would provide an ideal backup to thermal systems.
Many of the current airborne surveil-lance systems use lasers that are visible to anybody wearing or using intensified night vision. The advantage of the STAS system is that the laser would not be visible to any current in-use thermal or low-light sensors. And to the naked eye, the 1550-nm wavelength is not visible, so air-to-air use would not blind the pilot, saturate his night-vision goggles or cause other problems.
Meet the authorJohn Staples is sales director at Defence Vision Systems in East Sussex, UK; email: [email protected].
… However, most surveillance sensors work at 800 to 900 nm or 1064 nm,
so some wavelengths are wasted.
Advantages of a 24-hour system• No need to change from a day system
to a night system
• Increased safety due to continuous operation
• Smaller size for airborne/armored-vehicle applications
• Increased ease of use
• Reduced training time
• Less kit needed
• Less need for spares
• Lower cost
A computer-generated image of the 24-hour surveillance target acquisition system known as DVS STAS24, which uses a visible-band sensor plus a near-infrared sensor and lasers for rangefinding, target spotting and target illumination.
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of tomorrowWORKFORCE
December 2012 Photonics Spectra 59
In every industry, in good economies and in bad, the need exists for skilled entry-level workers. But how do those workers of the future gain needed skills? Photonics Spectra is pleased to launch a column featuring efforts in the US and around the world to prepare students for successful careers in optics and photonics.
Judy Donnelly, program coordinator for the Laser and Fiber Optic Technol-ogy program at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, Conn., is an educa-tion insider who will curate this monthly column.
Donnelly is the 2012 winner of OSA’s Esther Hoffman Beller Medal recognizing outstanding contributions to optical science and engineering education, and dedication to engaging middle/high school and college students in optical science and engineering. She is also the 2003 winner of the SPIE Educator Award.
To get things started, Photonics Spectra recently asked Donnelly 10 questions.
Q: How long have you been in your current position, and how has your work there changed over the years? A: I started at Three Rivers as a math/physics/electronics technology instructor in 1978, when it was a two-year technical college; we merged with a local commu-nity college in 1992. During the 1980s, I became interested in developing new physics labs to take advantage of more modern pedagogy and participated in sev-eral workshops on computer instruction in physics. I convinced the administration to purchase six Mac II computers with an interface that would allow us to use mo-tion, force, temperature and other sensors – state of the art for that time – and wrote a lab manual to go with them.
In 1995, I jumped at the chance to participate in a grant funded by the
Advanced Technological Education program of the National Science Founda-tion (NSF/ATE), the Fiber Optic Technol-ogy Education Project (FOTEP) of the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE). The three-year program began with a workshop at Springfield (Mass.) Technical Community College, where I met such wonderful people and had such a great time [that] I drove home think-ing I’d ask my dean if I could develop an elective course on fiber optics. His reply was, “Why don’t you start a program?” I agreed at once, and we convened an industry advisory committee. In 1997, the board of trustees approved our Photonics Engineering Technology program, now called Laser and Fiber Optic Technology.
Since then, the program has grown from four students to around 30; the peak was 45, when we had enough instructors to run day and evening classes. About 10 years ago, a second instructor was hired who developed and modernized
the electronics part of the program so I could concentrate on optics. Together, we developed several distance learn-ing courses and did a lot of off-campus training (including distance learning) at photonics companies in Connecticut. We worked with the CT Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (an NSF/ATE-funded center) and the laser industry of southern New England to develop an associate degree in laser manufacturing – the first in New England.
At our new campus since 2008, we now have three optics and electro-optics labs. We have active SPIE and OSA student chapters, whose members have done outreach in fifth-grade classrooms and run workshops at our annual laser camp for high school students and junior laser camp for fifth-graders. The outreach helps them work on their “soft” skills while they’re learning technical material in the classroom.
Q: Why is it so important for the optics and photonics industry to be talking now about educating the workforce of tomorrow?A: While preparing some recent grant applications, I read many articles on industry in general (not just optics and photonics) complaining that they can’t find the educated, skilled workers they need. But they must understand that it requires a partnership between industry and education to create this workforce.
An excellent example is the Dominion Nuclear Connecticut scholarship program at Three Rivers. Dominion supports 16 full scholarships, including summer internships at the local Millstone nuclear power plant. Because they can be highly selective in choosing candidates and work closely with the college to provide resources for teaching, students are ready to step into jobs at graduation.
• • • • • • • •A View from the Inside
Watch for “Workforce of Tomorrow” in the next issue of Photonics Spectra.
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of tomorrowWORKFORCE
A: Absolutely. I agree that we need to be doing this. The problem I see is that teachers themselves did not necessarily have STEM [science, technology, engi-neering and mathematics] training, and that makes it difficult for them to teach it. This is one reason we do outreach in classrooms, to help teachers who weren’t trained in optics to teach concepts to their students.
Also, people often see it as “S-T-E-M” – that is, four separate subjects taught separately rather than an interdisciplinary way of looking at the world. I see this all the time when I teach a math topic (say logarithms) as part of an optics course and students say, “It makes sense when you do it.” That’s because it’s not a topic taught in isolation; there’s a practical reason for learning. When we do our outreach work-shops, we always emphasize the practical applications of the science to give it some context.
Q: We have been talking for decades about how to get more girls and young women interested in math and science. Do you see anything working anywhere, or do you think there are different approaches to try?A: As I understand it, the number of girls in high school math and science classes is much higher than in my day, but girls’ interest in engineering and science careers is still low. I think a big part of the problem is that girls don’t see women who are engineers and scientists, so they don’t see themselves growing up to have a career like that. I became a science major because my dad, a mechanical engineer, used to like to explain how things worked. Going out at night to look for Sputnik and the aurora borealis piqued my interest in science and technology.
Q: Is there more the industry can do to recognize and perhaps support dedicated teachers?A: From my position running a small program at a community college, the best support would be to make sure on the state level the appropriate officials and legislators know that technology pro-grams – and those who teach them – are vital to their success. Beyond that, when they support my students with internships and mentoring, they are supporting me.
like industry-supported student capstone projects.
The best way for students to start a career with high-level technical skills (and attitudes) is through internships; this is where I’d like to see more industry sup-port. I hear complaints sometimes that our graduates don’t have a specific skill that a company is looking for. Where are they going to learn that skill? We have an ex-cellent laboratory filled with basic equip-ment, but it would not be cost-effective for us to purchase very expensive special-ized equipment to train students for two to three job openings that may or may not materialize at one company. Internships would allow students to learn specific skills and give companies a chance to “preview” workers at the same time.
Q: What would you most like the optics and photonics industry to know about the work being done and yet to be done to train its work-force of tomorrow?A: Industry should know that we can’t do it alone; we need to be partners in this effort. We’re doing the best we can to respond to their needs as they articulate them through yearly advisory meetings. But we are limited, especially in state institutions, by budget considerations.
Q: Tell us about one of your favorite optics and photonics education programs currently under way some-where in the world.A: It’s hard to choose just one! Through the four NEBHE NSF/ATE optics and photonics projects, I’ve met so many wonderful people running exceptional programs to both excite the next gen-eration of students and teach the current generation. Some of the most interesting projects I’ve come across are run by stu-dent chapters of OSA and SPIE. I’ve re-viewed outreach grant proposals for both societies, and the energy and enthusiasm of students is remarkable. One of these is Les Jeux Photoniques at Laval University in Québec [City]. I’ve heard presentations on their program, and the enthusiasm and excitement are palpable.
Q: There has been a lot of talk in the past few years about strengthen-ing STEM education. What are your thoughts on that?
Q: What do you hear from industry about its greatest needs and con-cerns regarding its future workforce?A: We meet yearly with our industry advisory committee to find out how we’re doing. So, this is New England-centric, but what we hear from them is that our students have great technical skills, but they need to work on critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork and commu-nication. We’re addressing that through problem-based learning, using “Chal-lenges” developed through NSF/ATE grants to NEBHE based on real-world problems solved by partner companies and research universities.
Q: What do you consider your biggest challenges today in providing the best education program in laser and fiber optic technologies, and how have your challenges changed over the past 10 years?A: I think the challenges have been pretty constant over the years, although the reorganization of the community colleges and state universities in Connecticut may produce a whole new set of challenges over the next couple of years.
Being a program coordinator is like owning a small business; there are so many hats to wear: marketing and recruit-ing, lab management, actual teaching (my favorite part), curriculum development and review, industry relations, job place-ment for students and, of course, trying to stay current with the technology. A lot of technology programs (like mine) com-prise one full-time faculty member and a few adjunct faculty who are on campus only a few hours per week.
Q: What is industry’s role in educat-ing its future workforce, and how has it changed over the years? How should it change over the next 10 years?A: In career programs like mine, industry support is vital, since our “product” is their technical workforce. When we started our program, we had good sup-port from a couple of local companies – donations of equipment, internships, even a scholarship program. But most of that support disappeared with the telecom crash. We are beginning to work more closely once again with industry as their hiring needs pick up on projects
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 61
A solar material that takes ad-vantage of a spectrum totally unused by standard cells could be the key to more efficient photovoltaics, now that a team in Germany has successfully doubled its efficiency.
Solar cells convert three-quarters of the energy in the sun’s spectrum into electric-ity, but about a quarter of its spectrum – the infrared – is lost in standard solar cells. Black silicon cells, however, are specifically designed to absorb nearly all of the sunlight that hits them, including IR radiation.
“Black silicon is produced by irradiat-ing standard silicon with femtosecond laser pulses under a sulfur-containing atmosphere,” said Dr. Stefan Kontermann, head of the Nanomaterials for Energy Conversion department within Fiber Opti-cal Sensor Systems at Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin.
In normal silicon, IR light doesn’t have enough energy to excite electrons into the conduction band and convert them into electricity, but incorporating sulfur atoms into black silicon forms a kind of intermediate level, or half-step. That level not only enables the electron to jump to a
higher conduction band, gaining energy, but also works in reverse, enabling the electrons from the band to jump back, causing electricity to be lost once again.
By modifying the laser pulse that drives the sulfur into the lattice, they also found that they can change the energy level of the sulfur, altering the number of electrons that can be created by a photon.
Black silicon solar cell prototypes have
been built, and the next step will be to try and merge the cells with commercial technology.
“We hope to be able to increase the ef-ficiency of commercial solar cells – which currently stands at approximately 17 percent – by 1 percent by combining them with black silicon,” Kontermann said.
The team also is planning a spinoff to market the laser system to manufacturers.
greenlight
• • • • • • • •Laser pulse improves black silicon’s solar efficiency
To make black silicon, standard silicon is irradiated using femtosecond laser pulses in a sulfur-containing atmosphere; the inset shows black silicon magnified. Modifying the laser pulse makes the material more efficient for use in solar cells.
“We hope to be able to increase
the efficiency of commercial solar
cells – which currently stands
at approximately 17 percent –
by 1 percent by combining
them with black silicon.”– Dr. Stefan Kontermann, Fraunhofer
Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI)
For more green photonics news, visit Photonics.com.
©Fr
aunh
ofer
HH
I
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62 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Imaging Components & Systems
Arctic 39N0 – a 3.9 mm aperture Liquid LensVarioptic, the liquid lens company, a business unit of Parrot SA, announces a 3.9 mm clear aperture, variable-focus lens. Designed for imaging and laser products requiring a large aperture, Arctic 39N0 features the same performance that has built the success of the Arctic series: excellent optical quality, large focus range, unmatched resistance to life cycles and shocks, and ultrafast response time. Arctic 39N0 is the ideal choice for demanding applications such as machine vision, medical imaging, optical equipment and biometric devices.
+33 4 37 65 35 [email protected]
www.varioptic.com
Nanopositioning Stages, Motors and Sensors, and Hexapods PI’s precision positioners, piezo actuators, flexure guided stages and capacitive sensors combine subnanometer stability with submillisecond responsiveness.
•1-to6-axisstageswithmanydigitalcontroloptions •Ultrasonicmotorsforhigh-speedautomation •Piezosteppinglinearmotorsforhigh-force,high-precisionapplications •Hexapodsforopticsalignment •Hybridlineartranslationstagesforlongtravelandnanometerprecision
(508) [email protected]
New PixelCam SWIR Multispectral CamerasThe PixelCam™ SWIR multispectral camera provides simultaneous “snap-shot” image acquisition of three or more standard and custom spectral bands in the short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) region from 500 to 1700 nm — all in a single compact camera. Merging the power of SWIR vision with precision pixel-level spectral filters opens up new possibilities in biomedi-cal imaging, process control, security, and other industrial and commercial applications.
Standard PixelCam cameras preconfigured with three and four bands are available now. Contact Ocean Thin Films for more information.
(303) [email protected]
New!!!! Nano-Edge Pass FiltersIridian’s Nano-Edge LPFs offer cutoffs of <26 cm21 (for 785 nm), corresponding to 0.2% of the laser wavelength; even steeper than market-leading ultrasteep LPFs (cutoffs <40 cm21)! These Nano-Edge LPFs also provide high transmittance (>90%); low ripple (<4% to 5%); a passband up to 1200 nm and deep blocking at the laser line (>OD 6).
(613) [email protected]
www.iridian.ca
See more new products at Photonics.comIt’s easy to find the latest products on our website – Photonics.com. JustclickonthemenumarkedPRODUCTSonthenavigationbar(under the logo) to find new products almost every day.
When people ask, “What’s new?” tell them to go to: “Photonics.com/Products.”
(413) [email protected]
photonics.com
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 63
Imaging Components & Systems
New 3-D Ultrafast Line SensorHigh accuracy is now compatible with fast measurement. Unique in metrology, the MPLS-180 confocal chromatic sensor revolutionizes in-line dimensional inspection for roughness, flatness and shape measurement. With the DEEPVIEW sensor, no defect is undetectable, thanks to its large 5-mm measuring range and 4-mm line length.
+33 442 396 [email protected]
www.stilsa.com
Low Power Consumption, High OutputContinuing our tradition of bringing ease of use to high-tech design, IDT LED illuminators deliver the coolest light in structured beams with maximum efficiency and intensity. All of our lighting products can be externally triggered for pulsed operation, while maintaining the same high luminosity output level as when used in a continuous mode. IDT lighting systems can be used as stand-alone units or can be combined with highly configurable controllers that drive multiple light heads.
(626) [email protected]
USB3.0 Industrial CamerasMightex’s USB3.0 cameras are designed for applications that require high-speed imaging and/or multiple cameras. These cameras have a data transfer rate of 400 MB/s, which is 10 times the USB2.0, 3.5 times the GigE and six times the FireWire-800 speed. The cameras also have trigger-in, strobe-out and four GPIO pins. Furthermore, a full-featured SDK is provided for OEM applications.
(925) [email protected]
Low-Noise 16-Bit, Cooled CCD CamerasDesigned for a wide range of applications in the life sciences, industrial and scientific imaging, the QSI 600 Series is a family of 16-bit, cooled CCD cameras with high sensitivity and linear response, and exceptionally low noise. •High-speedUSB2.0.ROIratesupto20fps •Widerangeofsensorsupto8.3megapixels •Regulatedcoolingto>45°Cbelowambient •Availableinternal5-or8-positioncolorfilterwheel •WindowsandLinuxsoftwaresupport
(888) [email protected]
Microdisplays for Structured LightForth Dimension Displays’ high-resolution reflective microdisplays are used globally for structured light projection in 3-D optical metrology. The high fillfactor(>96%)andlineargray-scaledisplaytechnology,coupledwiththeflexibility of the 3DM driver interface, make this the perfect choice for 3-D metrology systems builders. The application-specific driver interface, with its small size, configurable timing, synchronization and I/O ports, has been designed for easy integration into structured light projection systems. So if you want a fast, precise, accurate and cost-effective solution for your AOI, SPI or 3-D inspection system, contact our experts now.
+44 1383 827 [email protected]
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64 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Imaging Components & Systems
New sCMOS CameraThe new Zyla 5.5 megapixel scientific CMOS (sCMOS) camera is ideal for research and OEM usage. Zyla sCMOS offers a 100 fps rate, rolling and snapshot (global) shutter modes and ultra-low noise performance in a light, compact and cost-effective design. Zyla achieves down to 1.2 electron rms read noise and can read out the 5.5 megapixel sensor at a sustained 100 fps through a “10-tap” Camera Link interface. A highly cost-effective “3-tap” version is also available, offering up to 30 fps.
(800) [email protected]/zyla
End-Caps for Longer Life Fiber Optic CablesEnd-Caps for single-mode and PM fiber (125µm to 400µm OD clad) provide reduced power density where laser light enters or exits the fiber. The result is a “free space” optical end-face that is resistant to damage from high-power lasers and contaminants from the UV to 488nm lasers. End-Caps can be installed into a variety of connectors and ferrules.
Coastal Connections is the premier provider of engineered fiber optic cables and terminations – specializing in short (350nm to 980nm) wavelengths and high-power custom solutions for all environments.
(805) [email protected]
Smallest SWIR Line-Scan CamerasThe uncooled Lynx SWIR line-scan cameras feature unique 2048 pixels in an ultracompact housing. The Lynx cameras with low dark current are a flexible solution with GigE Vision (including Power over Ethernet) or Camera Link. Together with the smallest pixel pitch of 12.5 µm, Lynx allows more precision with lower cost lenses for industrial image processing and spectroscopy.
+32 16 38 99 [email protected]
High-Stability Optical SpectrometersMightex’s HRS-series compact optical spectrometers offer superb temperature and long-term stability, and they have a standard SMA fiber connector with an interchangeable entrance slit. With a 100-mm focal length, the spectrometers feature subnanometer resolution and high throughput. Powered by USB2.0, the spectrometers also come with external triggering, GPIO ports as well as a full-featured SDK for OEM applications.
(925) [email protected]
Photonics Spectrum Reference Chart 2012The updated Photonics Spectrum Reference Chart reflects the changing technologies in the photonics industry. This convenient format makes it easy to quickly find the information you need. Laminated copies of the Reference Chart can be purchased online at www.photonics.com/wallchart for $34 each ($39 outside the US). Nonlaminated copies, $19 each ($24 outside the US). All prices include shipping and handling, prepaid only.
(413) [email protected]
photonics.com
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Electronic AutocollimatorThe Conex-LDS from Newport Corp. is an
ultracompact electronic autocollimator. The control-ler is integrated into the optical head, occupying 4 3 1.5 3 1.5 in. Data refresh rate is 2 kHz, enabling analysis of resonance modes of structures. Angular sensitivity of the controller is 0.01 µrad, suitable for measuring small angular variations. Metrology applications in production environments include pitch, yaw, straightness, bearing eccentricity and wobble. The portable design, the integrated 60.85° field-of-view eyepiece and the mounting accessories enable quick [email protected]
Frame GrabberSensoray has launched Model 812, a frame
grabber with eight asynchronous input channels and a PCI-Express 31 interface. Each video chan-nel captures at 30 fps for NTSC or 25 fps for PAL, and eight channels of mono audio can be captured simultaneously. The interface facilitates plug-and-play operation into any width of PCI-Express slots. Operating power is supplied from the PCI-Express bus, with no external power supply required. Applications include image capture, multicamera security and product inspection. The captured video data can be streamed continuously to sys- tem memory or disk for immediate local display or further processing. All eight composite video inputs are connected through a DB15 connector
or through an optional DB15-to-BNC breakout cable. An additional 34-pin connector can be used for breaking in the composite video input [email protected]
Compact LEDThe high light output from Osram Opto Semi-
conductors’s Oslon Compact LED enables a single LED type to be used as the default light source for all automotive forward lighting applications. The light points in the headlight can be placed in any arrangement, and customized designs can be developed to give vehicles a unique appearance. The LEDs can be used for lightguides and adaptive front lighting [email protected]
Beamsplitters and CombinersPolarizing beamsplitters and beam com-
biners for CO2 lasers from 100 W up are being introduced by Laser Research Optics. The CO2 beamsplitters facilitate power measurements and beam alignment by reflecting a percentage of the beam, typically 50%, which covers all polarizations. The beam combiners, which combine 10.6- and 0.633-µm (HeNe) wavelengths, permit alignment and focusing by providing a visual light beam. De-signed for engraving, marking and scribing lasers, the devices are made from ZnSe with various coatings to achieve their polarization states. The beamsplitters enable up to 50% transmission and
63% reflectance, while the beam combiners allow 98.7% light transmission. Both are offered in 3⁄4- to 3-in. outer-diameter [email protected]
Raman SpectrometerThe LabRAM HR Evolution from Horiba
Scientific is a high-resolution Raman spectrom-eter with automated extended-wavelength-range capability. It has an achromatic optical design and operates from 200 to 2000 nm, with access to frequencies as low as 10 cm21, providing high-content spectroscopic information for chemical and structural identification, and submicron spatial resolution. It is suited for micro- and macro mea-surements, and for 2- and 3-D confocal [email protected]
Airborne Laser ScannerRiegl Laser Measurement Systems GmbH
has launched the LMS-Q780 long-range airborne laser scanner with an operating flight altitude of up to 10,000 ft at a 100-kHz laser pulse repetition rate. The laser wavelength qualifies the scanner for glacier and snowfield mapping, and digital waveform processing qualifies it for high-altitude topographic mapping. Multiple-time-around pro-cessing allows a maximum measurement range of 2450 m at a pulse repetition rate of 400 kHz and target reflectivity of 20%[email protected]
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1.3-Megapixel CameraJAI has introduced the AD-131GE, a monochrome camera that combines different exposures from its dual ICX447 CCDs in real time to generate high-dynamic-range images with 1296 3 966-pixel reso-lution. Output is via a GigE Vision digital interface. The two precisely aligned 1⁄3-in. CCDs are mounted to a beamsplitter prism, providing an identical field of view to each at a full-resolution speed of 31 fps. The shutter speed and/or gain for each CCD can be calibrated independently so that one imager cap-tures details in the brighter areas of a scene, while the second captures the same image in the darker areas. The two images or video streams can be processed with in-camera image fusion [email protected]
Protein MeasurementThe Zetasizer Nano ZSP from Malvern Instruments
Ltd. measures zeta potential, or electrophoretic mobility, of proteins. The compact dynamic-light-scattering system includes protein mobility mea-surement software. The new version of Zetasizer software also enables a new type of measurement – microrheology, a dynamic light-scattering-based optical technique that allows rheological charac-terization of weakly structured and strain-sensitive materials using only microliter sample volumes. Applications include measuring the viscosity of polymer and protein solutions, and determining the onset of protein [email protected]
Particle Counting and Analysis AppMedia Cybernetics has released a particle counting and analysis app for its Image-Pro Premier software that provides automatic particle
detection, particle sizing and measurement for industrial image analysis researchers. Using the app, researchers can automatically count and measure particles in live or static images with one mouse click. It guides users through selecting cali-bration settings, removing unwanted particles and saving analysis data. Measurements such as area, minimum and maximum diameter, radius ratio and roundness are collected from each frame, and all can be saved and exported to Excel for further analysis. At the end of each analysis session, users can save a snapshot of their analyzed image with measurement overlays to [email protected]
Beam ProfilerThe NIST-calibrated NanoScan v2 scanning-slit la-ser beam profiler from Photon uses moving slits to measure beam sizes from microns to centimeters at beam powers from microwatts to kilowatts, with little to no attenuation. It features an enhanced graphical user interface with support for the Microsoft Windows ribbon toolbar. Dockable and floatable windows plus concealable ribbon toolbars allow users to make the most of any size display, from small laptops to large multimonitor desktops. The system is suitable for profiling the CO2 beams used in materials processing. It supports 64- and 32-bit versions of Windows 7, increasing processing speed. Detector options (silicon, germanium and pyroelectric) enable measurement at wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the [email protected]
Single-Frequency LasersCobolt AB has released four single-frequency diode-pumped solid-state lasers based on the 05-01 platform. The Zouk 355 nm’s output power is up to 20 mW; the Samba 532 nm, up to 1.5 W; the Flamenco 660 nm, up to 0.5 W; and the Rumba 1064 nm, up to 3 W. They are used in superresolu-tion stimulated emission depletion microscopy, UV fluorescence analysis in flow cytometry and confocal microscopy, Ti:sapphire laser pumping, DNA sequencing, Raman spectroscopy, optical tweezers, nonlinear frequency conversion and particle analysis. Manufactured using proprietary
HTCure technology in a compact and hermetically sealed package, they can be exposed to tempera-tures .100 °C and are insensitive to pressure and humidity. [email protected]
Midband OPOA midband tunable optical parametric oscillator (OPO) has been released by Continuum Electro-
Optics Inc. The Horizon OPO offers a tuning range into the vacuum-ultraviolet, a narrow linewidth and active precision control. Designed with optimal mechanical and optical integrity, it provides access to wavelengths between 192 and 2750 nm. Fully automated with precision scanning for hands-free operation, it is a robust system built for consistent output and is compatible with a variety of the com-pany’s pump lasers. [email protected]
EUV Light Source Energetiq Technology Inc. has announced its EQ-10HP 20-W extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) light source for actinic inspection of EUV masks. It oper-ates at substantially higher input powers than its EQ-10 series predecessors and delivers 20 W of in-band EUV into 2 pi steradians. Its small, stable, inductively driven plasma makes it suitable for EUV metrology and inspection applications, and its modular design facilitates integration into a process tool. The system includes the proprietary and patented Electrodeless Z-pinch source assem-bly, vacuum and gas subsystems, a power delivery subsystem and control [email protected]
new products•
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Silicone CompoundA silicone compound for potting and encapsulating applications has been developed by Epoxies Etc. The 50-1225 compound provides good thermal conductivity, flexibility and high temperature resis-tance. The two-part silicone system is designed for electronic packages that require good flow around components, high thermal conductivity, cushioning for sensitive components, and the ability to sustain environmental extremes. It is free of any flammable or toxic solvents and will cure in deep sections. It has a service temperature of 265 to 210 °C and will not support or promote a flame. The system cushions electronics through aging and thermal cycling, provides low shrinkage during cure, does not stress components and quickly transfers heat away from [email protected]
Laser Beam Propagation AnalyzerOphir Photonics Group has announced a new version of the M2-200s camera-based beam propagation analyzer. It supports 64-bit Windows 7, addressing more physical memory, minimizing the time required to swap processes, and speeding the measurement cycle to ,2 min. Its CCD camera works with pulsed and CW lasers from 266 to 1300 nm. The portable system measures M2, beam waist location and width, divergence, astigmatism, asym-metry ratio and the Rayleigh range for each axis. Input beam sizes can range from 0.5 to 10 mm. It uses a fixed-position lens and a moving detector, enabling measurement even when the laser beam is diverging or converging. The software displays a 2- or 3-D beam profile of the currently measured point in the beam propagation curve. [email protected]
Industrial CameraThe USB uEye ML compact industrial camera introduced by IDS Imaging Development Systems
GmbH has a USB 2.0 interface, and is lightweight and housed in a magnesium casing. Its lockable USB and Hirose connector and metal casing ensure secure operation in extreme industrial environ-ments. The camera offers a C/CS lens mount as well as two general-purpose input/outputs (I/O’s) and optically decoupled trigger and flash I/O’s. The 1.3-megapixel CMOS sensor from e2v offers good sensitivity and is available in color, monochrome and NIR versions. The camera is suited for ap-plications in intelligent transportation systems, quality control, microscopy, medical engineering and machine vision. The sensor offers four shutter modes that can be switched during operation. The camera delivers 25 fps at full 1280 3 1024-pixel resolution. [email protected]
Laser Cutting and Drilling Custom laser cutting and drilling services performed on parts that are powder-coated to produce clean openings and eliminate masking time have been introduced by Advanced Laser
Technologies. The services can be performed on parts that have been powder-coated with thermal barrier coatings to reduce assembly and handling costs. Featuring precise patterns, laser cutting after powder coating can produce holes down to 0.015 in. in diameter and assure clean edges with no overspray. Suited for parts made from 6061 aluminum and similar materials, the cutting and
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drilling services are performed using an Nd:YAG laser system that can handle parts up to 30 in. in diameter. Applications include instrument hous-ings, detectors, filters, and air and fluid control [email protected]
Laser Enclosure The patent-pending HSP Laser-Gard Barrier System from Honeywell Safety Products securely en-closes a laser setup on an optical table, enhancing experimental conditions while safeguarding person-nel from exposure to laser radiation. The modular system can be adjusted to the exact size of the optical table. It incorporates a visual indicator that identifies whether the panel is properly closed. Each panel is equipped with a safety lock that prevents unintended access. Access to the optical table is gained by flipping down a side panel. The system, certified to EN 12254, guarantees cable access around the perimeter of the table. It fixes securely around the outer edge, and the entire width and length of the optical table remain avail-able for the experiment. [email protected]
Light Engines LED light engines with fluorescence excitation filters are offered by Innovations in Optics Inc. LumiBright LE uses state-of-the-art LED technology and interference filters with hard dielectric coatings for fluorescence excitation in life sciences instru-mentation and medical illumination. Excitation fil-ters can be added to each light engine. Applications for fluorescence excitation filters include gel and blot imagers, real-time polymerase chain reaction systems, cytometers, colony counters, microplate readers and gene array readers. The filters feature
in-band peak transmission .92% and out-of-band blocking .OD7. Patented nonimaging optics direct LED light into a desired cone angle, while producing uniform angular and spatial output. Peak LED wavelengths range from 365 nm through the near-infrared, or as broadband white, configured as dense chip-on-board LED arrays with single- or multicolor options. [email protected]
Water-Cooling SystemA modular water-cooling system from autoVimation is for in-house protective camera enclosures with a dovetail profile. It extends the permissible ambient temperature range for machine vision systems to 220 to 120 °C. The system comprises a water-cooling module installed on top of the camera enclosure to absorb waste heat, and a re-cooling unit that brings the heated water back to room tem-perature. A closed water circuit ensures safe, clean and virtually maintenance-free operation. At low or strongly fluctuating temperatures, the system can be used as a heating unit. Switching between cooling and heating is not necessary because the system automatically adjusts the enclosure tem-perature to match the ambient temperature around the re-cooling unit. [email protected]
Miniature Spectrometers B&W Tek Inc. has expanded its Exemplar smart spectrometer line with the introduction of the Exemplar LS and Exemplar Plus. The miniature spectrometers are used in high-speed reaction ki-netics, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and real-time process monitoring. They feature a low-stray-light “unfolded” Czerny-Turner spectrograph to provide good performance below 400 nm. The Exemplar LS integrates into compact UV and UV/VIS spectrophotometer systems. The Exemplar Plus offers an increased focal length, decreasing linear
dispersion and improving spectral resolution. This enables selection of lower groove density gratings to provide a wider spectral range. It also features a sensitive, high-dynamic-range thermoelectri-cally cooled back-thinned CCD detector with 2048 effective pixels. [email protected]
Spectroscopy SystemsBioDrop Ltd. has launched its line of microvolume spectroscopy systems. The BioDrop Cuvette and BioDrop UV/VIS spectrophotometers are used in life sciences laboratories and are available in a variety of configurations. BioDrop µLite has a sampling port for measurements down to a 0.5-µL sample volume. BioDrop Duo combines the sampling port with a 10-mm cuvette holder for UV/VIS spectrophotometry and is optimized for use with the BioDrop Cuvette. BioDrop Touch features a standard cuvette holder and is compatible with the BioDrop Cuvette using an integrated magnetic pipetting station. The instruments are available in stand-alone and PC-controlled versions. BioDrop Resolution Life Science PC software is supplied as standard. USB connectivity offers easy PC connection and export of data. BioDrop Cuvette performs microvolume measurement of DNA, RNA and proteins. [email protected]
Benchtop Optical MicroscopeBruker Corp.’s ContourGT-I 3-D optical micro-scope enhances R&D productivity and maximizes manufacturing throughput for industrial applica-
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tions. It accelerates and simplifies measurement setup and feature tracking. The benchtop profiling system incorporates a proprietary tip/tilt head and automated turret, lenses and illumination. It offers vibration stability and a space-efficient footprint with integrated air isolation. Applications include ophthalmics, medical device implants, precision machining and semiconductor manufacturing. It provides high Z-axis resolution and fast measure-ments with large fields of view on difficult surface geometries. The tip/tilt head enables characteriza-tion of surface features over a range of angles. By minimizing X-Y tracking errors and reducing feature location setup time, the microscope enables gage-capable measurement on demand and keeps the sample in focus when switching [email protected]
MicrospectrophotometerRaman microspectroscopy capabilities have been added to Craic Technologies Inc.’s 20/20 Perfect Vision microspectrophotometer. Users now can acquire Raman spectra with lasers from the blue to the near-infrared, in addition to UV/VIS/NIR absorbance, reflectance, fluorescence and emission microspectra. The 20/20 PV acquires these spectra of even submicron samples rapidly and from the same area with proprietary optical aperturing technology, which acquires images of the microscopic samples in the UV, visible and NIR. It is used for developing nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes, for studying biological samples, and for analyzing forensic samples and measuring thin-film thickness. The microspectrophotometer is a self-contained unit that features UV/VIS/NIR light sources, solid-state lasers, true UV/VIS/NIR microscopy, sensitive UV/VIS/NIR-range spectrom-eters and Minerva spectral [email protected]
Raman SpectrometersThe Advantage series Raman spectrometers from DeltaNu Inc. are used in analyzing solutions, gels, powders and solid materials. Each benchtop sys-tem features an X-Y-Z stage, and FSX technology for reproducible and repeatable Raman spectra. The systems incorporate a proprietary and patented free-space optical design, eliminating the need for fiber optic probes. The spectrometers offer four laser source options: 532, 633, 785 and 1064 nm. The instruments are supplied with an improved ver-sion of the NuSpec suite of open architecture soft-ware. Data collection is simplified with an intuitive graphical user interface and multiple file formats for data archiving. Grams AI spectroscopy software is now included as standard. An integrated library-build and correlation-matching package complete the software. The 633-nm model is for kinetic studies, laser power adjustments and polarization experiments.www.deltanu.com
SpectroradiometersThe SR-500 and SR-1100 spectroradiometers from Spectral Evolution can validate the class of any commercially available continuous-output solar simulator, per IEC 60904-9/ASTM E927-05. The systems are suitable for measuring irradiance and spectral match. With no moving optics to break down, they feature reliability. They are supplied with a right-angle diffuser, offer NIST-traceable calibra-tion, feature autoexposure and autoshutter for one-touch operation, and weigh ,3 lb. Both systems work with DARWin SP data acquisition and analysis software to capture and show actual irradiance over a 320- to 1100-nm range. Built-in software routines provide class status as a function of wave-length and generate a spectral match [email protected]
Fluorescence SpectrometerEdinburgh Instruments has launched the FLS980 fluorescence spectrometer for steady-state, lifetime and phosphorescence measurements in photophysics, photochemistry, biophysics,
new products•
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70 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
Submit Your Paper: http://microscopy.org/MandM/2013 DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Visit M&M website often for detailed program information, registration & hotel info.
Call for Papers NOW OPEN
biochemistry, luminescence spectroscopy and semiconductor physics. The automated modular spectrometer’s optics include high stray light rejec-tion monochromators and computer-controlled filter wheels. Spectral measurements can be made from 200 nm to 5 µm, with time resolution from a few picoseconds to seconds. An ultrafast data ac-quisition module accommodates any combination of light sources and detectors for time-correlated single-photon counting, multichannel scaling and spectral scanning. USB connectivity provides fast
data processing, module control and operation. Live profiles can be observed on-screen as they are acquired before data manipulation and [email protected]
Digital Laptop Frame GrabbersImperx has released its latest family of digital lap-top frame grabbers, the HD-SDI Express. The HD-SDI ExpressCard/34 and HD-SDI ExpressCard/54 video capture cards have form factors of 34 and 54 mm, respectively, and a single coaxial cable
connector. When the cards are used with a camera that transmits video using an SD or HD serial digital interface (SDI) format, video can be viewed and stored in real time. The cards capture single or mul-tiple frames and stamp a user message, date and time of capture onto the video. They capture two channels of 24-bit audio at 48 kHz. With the audio included in the card’s single input, no software is needed to mix and sync audio and [email protected]
PicoammeterA picoammeter with dual 630-V, independent, nonfloating bias sources and 1-fA measurement resolution has been launched by Keithley Instru-
ments Inc. Model 6482 provides two independent picoammeter/source channels in a 2U, half-rack enclosure, allowing simultaneous measurements across both channels. The wide measurement range ensures high sensitivity and resolution for low-current applications that require making measurements at multiple points simultane-ously. The 2-nA measurement range is suitable for measuring dark currents. Once the dark current has been determined, the instrument’s relative function automatically subtracts it as an offset so the measured values are more accurate for optical power measurements. For measuring the dark currents of photodiodes, the front panel display can be switched off to avoid introducing light that would interfere with obtaining accurate [email protected]
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l Indicates shows Photonics Media will attend.Complete listings at www.photonics.com/calendar. December 2012 Photonics Spectra 71
Happenings
JANUARYNanometa 2013: Fourth International Topical Meeting on Nanophotonics and Metamaterials (Jan. 3-6) Tirol, Austria. Contact European Physical Society, +33 3 89 32 94 42; [email protected]; www.nanometa.org.
Advanced Photonics Techniques in Soft Matter and Biology (Jan. 14) London. Contact Jenny Bremner, Institute of Physics, [email protected]; www.iop.org.
IEEE Workshop on Robot Vision (WORV) 2013 (Jan. 16-17) Clearwater, Fla. Organized within the framework of the IEEE Winter Vision Meetings. Contact [email protected]; worv.cse. usf.edu.
2013 IEEE: 26th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) (Jan. 20-24) Taipei, Taiwan. Contact June Echizen, +81 3 3346 8007; [email protected]; www.mems2013.org.
l Automate 2013 (Jan. 21-24) Chicago. Contact Association for Advancing Automation (A3), +1 (734) 994-6088; [email protected]; automate2013.com.
IFPAC 2013: 27th International Forum and Exhibition Process Analytical Technology (Process Analysis & Control) (Jan. 22-25) Baltimore. Contact IFPAC Committee, +1 (847) 543-6800; [email protected]; www.ifpac.com.
OnSite Annual Meeting for Homeland Security, Forensics and Environmental Remediation (Jan. 23-25) Baltimore. Contact OnSite, +1 (847) 543-6800; [email protected]; www.ifpac.com/ onsite.
2013 NAALT Conference (Jan. 31-Feb. 2) Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Contact Jennifer Anderson, North American Association for Laser Therapy, [email protected]; www.naalt.org/2013 Conference.
FEBRUARYl Biophysical Society 57th Annual Meeting (Feb. 2-6) Philadelphia. Contact Biophysical Society, +1 (240) 290-5600; [email protected]; www.biophysics.org.
l Photonics West (Feb. 2-7) San Francisco. Includes BiOS, LASE, OPTO, MOEMS-MEMS and Green Photonics. Contact SPIE, +1 (360) 676-3290; [email protected]; spie.org.
IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging (Feb. 3-7) Burlingame, Calif. Contact SPIE, +1 (360) 676-3290; [email protected]; spie.org.
Annual International Conference on Optoelectronics, Photonics & Applied Physics (OPAP) (Feb. 4-5) Singapore. Contact OPAP Conference Secretariat, +65 6327 0166; info@ physics-conf.org; www.physics-conf.org.
SPIE Medical Imaging (Feb. 9-14) Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Contact SPIE, +1 (360) 676-3290; [email protected]; spie.org.
International Lidar Mapping Forum (Feb. 11-13) Denver. Contact Intelligent Exhibitions Ltd., +44 1453 836 363; [email protected]; www.lidarmap.org.
BioMed 2013: The Tenth IASTED International Conference on Biomedical Engineering (Feb. 13-15) Innsbruck, Austria. An event of the International Association of Science and Technology for Development. Contact IASTED Secretariat, +1 (403) 288-1195; [email protected]; www.iasted.org.
Oasis: 14th International Meeting on Optical Engineering and Science in Israel (Feb. 18-20) Tel Aviv, Israel. Contact Kaleidoscope Ltd., +972 3 602 2708; [email protected]; www.oasis4.org.il.
EALA: European Automotive Laser Applications 2013 (Feb. 19-20) Bad Nauheim, Germany. Contact Annika Beutner, Automotive Circle International, +49 511 9910 377; annika.beutner @vincentz.net; www.automotive-circle.com.
Fifth European Short Course on Time-Resolved Microscopy and Correlation Spectroscopy
(Feb. 19-21) Berlin. Contact Julia-Maria Grössler, PicoQuant GmbH, +49 30 6392 6929; [email protected]; www.picoquant.com.
2013 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS) (Feb. 19-21) Galveston, Texas. Contact Lauren Pasquarelli, +1 (352) 872-5544; [email protected]; www. sensorapps.org.
FTTH Conference 2013 (Feb. 19-21) London. Contact FTTH Council Europe asbl (Fibre to the Home Council Europe), +32 2 517 6103; [email protected]; www.ftthconference.eu.
Photoptics 2013: International Conference on Photonics, Optics and Laser Technology (Feb. 20-21) Barcelona, Spain. Contact Photoptics Secretariat, +351 265 520 185; photoptics. [email protected]; www.photoptics.org.
SPIE 2013: Nano-Bio Sensing, Imaging & Spectroscopy (NBSIS) (Feb. 20-23) Jeju-do, Korea. Contact NBSIS Secretariat, +82 42 860 5292; [email protected]; www.nbsis.org.
NextMed/MMVR20 (Medicine Meets Virtual Reality) (Feb. 20-23) San Diego. Contact AMA Inc., +1 (805) 534-0300; [email protected]; www.nextmed.com.
PAPERSPhotonics North 2013 (June 3-5) Ottawa, Ontario, CanadaDeadline: abstract submission, January 5Researchers are encouraged to present their work at the 15th international Photonics North conference, which will focus on the application of photonics technologies, with an emphasis on closing the gap between theory, development and application. The conference serves as a Cana-dian meeting point between the academic community and the industrial/government sector. Strategic research directions for photonics in Canada will be addressed. Contact Pavel Cheben, National Research Council, [email protected]; www.photonicsnorth.com.
ECBO 2013 (May 12-16) MunichDeadline: submissions, January 16, noon EST, 17:00 GMTOrganizers of the European Conferences on Biomedical Optics (ECBO) invite papers in the areas of neurophotonics, advanced microscopy techniques, diffuse optical imaging, optoacoustic methods, novel biophotonic techniques, optical coherence tomography and coherence tech-niques, clinical and biomedical spectroscopy and imaging, and head and neck optical diagnos-tics. The conference will feature awards for best student paper and best poster presentation. The event is part of the World of Photonics Congress. Contact The Optical Society, +1 (202) 416-1907; [email protected]; www.osa.org.
CLEO: 2013 (June 9-14) San Jose, CaliforniaDeadline: abstracts, January 30, noon EST, 17:00 GMTPapers are sought for CLEO, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics. Research will be presented under the core conferences CLEO: QELS – Fundamental Science; CLEO: Science & Innovations; and CLEO: Applications & Technology. Topics to be addressed include quantum optics of atoms, molecules and solids; light-matter interactions and materials processing; and lightwave communications and optical networks. The event is sponsored by the American Physi-cal Society/Laser Science Div., the IEEE Photonics Society and The Optical Society. Contact OSA, technical papers staff, +1 (202) 416-6191; [email protected]; www.cleoconference.org.
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72 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
VISIGRAPP 2013: Eighth International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (Feb. 21-24) Barcelona, Spain. Contact VISIGRAPP Secretariat, +351 265 520 184; [email protected]; www.visigrapp.org.
SPIE Advanced Lithography (Feb. 24-28) San Jose, Calif. Contact SPIE, +1 (360) 676-3290; [email protected]; spie.org.
2013 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis) (Feb. 27-March 1) Sydney. Contact Karsten Klein, University of Sydney, +61 2 9036 9754; [email protected]; sydney.edu.au/ engineering/it/~pvis2013.
MARCHEuropean Congress of Radiology (ECR 2013) (March 7-11) Vienna. Contact European Society of Radiology, +43 1 533 40 64-0; [email protected]; www.myesr.org.
Mass Spectral Interpretation Course (March 8-10) Philadelphia. Contact Barbara Sherman, PACS Testing, Consulting and Training, +1 (724) 457-6576; [email protected]; www.pacslabs.com.
SPIE Smart Structures/NDE (March 10-14) San Diego. Contact SPIE, +1 (360) 676-3290; [email protected]; spie.org.
l OFC/NFOEC (March 17-21) Anaheim, Calif. The combined meeting of the Conference on Optical Fiber Communication and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference. Contact OFC/NFOEC, +1 (202) 416-1907; [email protected]; www.ofcnfoec.org.
l PITTCON 2013: Laboratory Science Equipment Conference and Exposition (March 17-21) Philadelphia. Contact Pittcon, +1 (412) 825-3220; [email protected]; pittcon.org.
Third EOS Topical Meeting on Blue Photonics – Optics in the Sea (March 18-20) Texel, Netherlands. An event of the European Optical Society. Contact Julia Dalichow, EOS - Events & Services GmbH, +49 511 277 2673; bluephotonics3@ myeos.org; www.myeos.org.
ILSC: International Laser Safety Conference (March 18-21) Orlando, Fla. Contact Laser Institute of America, +1 (407) 380-1553; [email protected]; www.lia.org/ilsc.
META 2013: Fourth International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics (March 18-22) Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Contact Said Zouhdi, LGEP-Supelec, +33 1 69 85 16 60; [email protected]; metaconferences.org.
l LaserWorld of Photonics China 2013 (March 19-21) Shanghai. Contact Sabine Kallup, Munich International Trade Fairs, +1 (646) 437-1012; [email protected]; www.world-of-photonics.net/en/laser-china/start.
ULIS 2013: 14th International Conference on Ultimate Integration on Silicon (March 19-21) Coventry, UK. Contact David Leadley, University of Warwick, +44 2476 524 114; [email protected]; www.ulisconference.org.
Focus on Microscopy 2013 (March 24-27) Maastricht, Netherlands. Contact Mariska Timmers, AMC Congress Organization – The Netherlands, +31 20 5662 238; m.p.timmers@ amc.uva.nl; www.focusonmicroscopy.org.
APRIL33rd ASLMS Annual Conference (April 3-7) Boston. Contact American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, +1 (715) 845-9283; [email protected]; www.aslms.org.
ISBI 2013: International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro (April 7-11) San Francisco. Contact IEEE, isbi2013- [email protected]; www.biomedicalimaging.org.
icOPEN2013: The International Conference on Optics in Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology (April 9-11) Singapore. Contact Anand Asundi, Nanyang Technological University, +65 6790 5936; [email protected]; www.icopen.com.sg.
Electronics New England (April 10-11) Boston. Contact UBM Canon, +1 (310) 445-4200; [email protected]; www.canontradeshows. com.
2013 IEEE 10th International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control (ICNSC) (April 10-12) Evry, France. Contact Sabine Segala, IBISC, +33 169 477 551; sabine.segala@ibisc. univ-evry.fr; www.icnsc2013.org.
Optics in the Life Sciences (April 14-18) Waikoloa Beach, Hawaii. Includes Optical Trapping Applications (OTA); Novel Techniques in Microscopy (NTM); Bio-Optics: Design and Application (BODA); and Optical Molecular Probes, Imaging and Drug Delivery (OMP). Contact The Optical Society, +1 (202) 223-8130; [email protected]; www.osa.org.
SPIE Optics + Optoelectronics (April 15-18) Prague. Contact SPIE, +1 (360) 676-3290; [email protected]; spie.org.
Experimental Biology 2013 (April 20-24) Bos-ton. Contact FASEB (Federation of American Societ-ies for Experimental Biology), +1 (301) 634-7000; [email protected]; experimentalbiology.org.
HARMNST Berlin 2013: 10th International Workshop on High Aspect Ratio Micro and Nano System Technology (April 21-24) Berlin. Contact Sabrina Rosendahl, congressorg@micro resist.de; www.harmnst2013.org.
Happenings
Contact your sales representative at(413) 499-0514 or at [email protected]
Photonics Spectra Advertising and Sponsorship Opportunities
Year after year, Photonics Spectra maintains the industry’s highest audited print and digital magazine circulation – now at 95,000 total,
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March Features: Photonics for Solar Cell Production, LED Inspection Systems, Software: Coatings, Spectroscopy, Prism Awards Winners Spotlight: Imaging Components & Systems Sneak Preview: OFC/NFOEC Webinar: Trends in Biophotonic Imaging Photonics Showcase Ad close: January 31, 2013
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December 2012 Photonics Spectra 73
Advertiser Index
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aAndor Technology plc ...............64
www.andor.comApplied Scientific Instrumentation Inc. ..............18
www.asiimaging.comArgyle International Inc. ...........67
www.argyleoptics.comAutomated Imaging Association ............................35
www.automate2013.com
b Bristol Instruments Inc. ............38
www.bristol-inst.com
cCambridge Technology Inc. ......................13
www.cambridgetechnology.comCoastal Connections ................64
www.coastalcon.comCVI Melles Griot ........................30
www.cvimellesgriot.com
dDataRay Inc. .............................14
www.dataray.comDRS Technologies Inc. .............31
www.drs.com
eEdmund Optics .........................26
www.edmundoptics.comElectro-Optical Products Corp. .......................23
www.eopc.comExcelitas Technologies ............... 7
www.excelitas.com
fFermionics Opto-Technology ....................29
www.fermionics.comFLIR Systems Inc. .....................34
www.flir.comForth Dimension Displays Ltd. ..........................63
www.forthdd.com
gGT Crystal Systems LLC ...........18
www.gtat.com
hHamamatsu ..............................40
www.sales.hamamatsu.com
iImage Science Ltd. ...................12
www.image-science.co.ukIntegrated Design Tools Inc. ................................63
www.idtvision.comIridian Spectral Technologies Ltd. ..................62
www.iridian.ca
jJenoptik ....................................11
www.jenoptik.com
lLake Shore Cryotronics Inc. .......................69
www.lakeshore. com
mM&M Conference Management .........................70
www.microscopy.org/mandm/2013
Master Bond Inc. ......................67www.masterbond.com
Meller Optics Inc. .............................. 37
www.melleroptics.comMetrigraphics LLC ....................45
www.metrigraphicsllc.comMightex Systems .......................... 63, 64
www.mightexsystems.comMOXTEK Inc. .............................33
www.moxtek.com
nNewport Corporation ..................... 6, CV4
www.newport.comNovotech Inc. ............................21
www.novotech.netNufern .....................................CV3
www.nufern.com
oOcean Thin Films ......................62
www.oceanthinfilms.com
pPhotonics Media ...........39, 44, 62, 64, 72
www.photonics.comPI (Physik Instrumente) L.P. ......62
www.pi.wsPower Technology Inc. ............. CV2, 27
www.powertechnology.com
qQuantum Scientific Imaging Inc. ...........................63
www.qsimaging.com
rRaytheon Company ..................19
www.raytheon.comResearch Electro-Optics Inc. .................15
www.reoinc.comRoss Optical Industries ................................. 8
www.rossoptical.com
sSill Optics GmbH .........................28
www.silloptics.deStanford Research Systems Inc. ............................ 3
www.thinksrs.comSTIL S.A. ....................................63
www.stilsa.com
tTohkai Sangyo Co. Ltd. ......................69
www.peak.co.jpTruesense Imaging Inc. ............................. 9
www.truesenseimaging.com
vVarioptic, Business Unit of Parrot SA ............................62
www.varioptic.com
xXenics ........................................64
www.xenics.com
1212AdIndex.indd 73 12/3/12 4:14 PM
74 Photonics Spectra December 2012 www.photonics.com
“In ancient times,” goes the Spinal Tap song, “hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived a strange race of people: the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing, but their legacy remains, hewn into the living rock ... of Stonehenge.”
The song might not be factually ac-curate – carbon dating proves that the Druids came along too late to take credit – but it does capture the mystery that has surrounded Stonehenge for ages. And now a comprehensive 3-D laser scan of the ancient monument has given researchers new evidence of how it was built and what its purpose was.
Data from this first full laser survey on Stonehenge, commissioned by the London-based English Heritage organiza-tion, reveals significant differences in the ways the stones were shaped and worked.
Archaeological analysis of the scans shows that the stones in the outer sarsen circle, visible from the northeast ap-proach, were completely pick-dressed – that is, their surface crust was removed to expose a bright gray-white surface. In contrast, the outer faces of the surviv-ing upright stones in the southwestern part of the circle did not receive this technical attention. The data also shows that the sides of the stones bordering the solstice axis were carefully worked to form very straight and narrow rectangu-lar slots.
The scan analysis strongly suggests that special effort was made to dress the stones that flank the northeast/southwest axis to allow a more dramatic and obvi-ous passage of sunlight through the stone circle on midsummer and midwinter solstices, English Heritage said.
The variations show not only that the monument aligns with the solstices, but also that its view from the Avenue – the ancient processional way to the northeast
– was especially important to the early architects.
To approach and view the stone circle from this direction means that the mid-winter sunset had special meaning to pre-historic people; English Heritage said that the builders of Stonehenge made deliber-ate efforts to create a dramatic spectacle for those approaching the monument from the northeast.
“We didn’t expect the results to be so revealing about the architecture of Stone-henge. It has given further scientific basis to the theory of the solstitial alignment and the importance of the approach to the monument from the Avenue in midwin-ter,” said Susan Greaney, senior properties historian at English Heritage.
The data also recorded the monument’s visible graffiti, damage, weathering and restoration; identified known prehistoric carvings as well as new carvings; and provided information on the incompletion of the sarsen circle. “The new presenta-tion of Stonehenge will enable visitors to appreciate the importance of the solsti-tial alignment far better,” said Loraine Knowles, Stonehenge director at English Heritage. “[That’s] why we are closing the A344 [road] which severs the alignment, to enable the stone circle to be reunited with the Avenue.”
Caren [email protected]
lighterSIDE
• • • • • • • •Laser scans probe Stonehenge secrets
A full 3-D laser scan of Stonehenge offers evidence that the northeast view of the prehistoric monument was especially important to its creators.
©En
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erita
ge
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