Laser Focus World articles from July 2003

Laser Focus World archives from July 2003

A date to remember. (editor's desk).
July 1, 2003... Among the many different sessions at last month's Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) in Baltimore, MD, was a celebration of the semiconductor laser. Developed more than 40 years ago at four different labs by Robert Hall, Nick...

Quantum-cascade laser reaches watt-level average powers. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... A 0.67-W average power for a room-temperature 5.9-[micro]m-emitting quantum-cascade (QC) laser has been demonstrated by researchers at Northwestern University. The group aimed to reduce the devices' threshold current density and their...

III-nitride microlens arrays may facilitate integration of optoelectronic devices. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... Researchers at Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS)have fabricated III-nitride microlens arrays for blue and ultraviolet wavelength applications on gallium nitride (GAN) and aluminum nitride (AIN) using photoresist reflow and inductively...

All-optical sectioning of tissue produces diffraction-limited volumetric images. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... The conventional way to determine the detailed three-dimensional (3-D) structure of tissue is to freeze it, slice it into sections, and examine or scan the slices with a microscope. This technique is laborious and can affect the tissue's...

Photonic crystals produce negative refraction. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... Researchers at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) have demonstrated negative refraction of electromagnetic waves in a two-dimensional dielectric photonic crystal with periodically modulated positive permittivity and a permeability of unity....

Implanted carbon forms waveguide in Nd:YAG. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... Optical waveguides in Nd:YAG crystals are a potential basis for many interesting optoelectronic devices. Researchers at the Centro de Investigaciones en Optica (Guanajuato, Mexico), the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (Distrito Federal,...

Active-matrix bistable reflective display is inkjet-printed. (news break).
July 1, 2003... Flat-panel displays typically must be fabricated using a high-precision manufacturing process such as photolithography. Organic and plastic-based displays can potentially be manufactured by inkjet printing of features, a process offering vast...

Diamond detector has three-electrode structure. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... Not only does diamond Sparkle--it withstands ionizing radiation, too. Researchers at the University of Rome and CNR, Institute of Inorganic Methodology and Plasmas (both of Rome, Italy) are using the material as a basis for photodetectors that...

Air-clad large-mode-area holey-fiber laser yields high power. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... The design principles of double cladding and large mode areas historically have enabled creation of high-power fiber lasers. Applying these concepts to an actively doped microstructurer--photonic crystal--fiber produced up to 80-W output power...

Orbital telescope observations substantiate solar-atmosphere-heating theory. (news breaks).
July 1, 2003... Simultaneous observations of the Sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) telescope by researchers at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (Palo Alto, CA) and...

Light moves droplets precisely. (Microfluidics).
July 1, 2003... Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) have demonstrated that liquid droplets can be moved, injected, mixed, and split using laser light rather than electronic control. The new technique should bring microlaboratories...

Muted CLEO still highlights excellence. (optoelectronics world news).
July 1, 2003... In the not-too-distant past, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO; June 1-6, Baltimore, MD) was the premiere show for exhibitors and aficionados of optoelectronic technologies. Sometime between the telecom bubble and the current...

Gallium arsenide emits at telecom wavelengths. (optoelectronics world news).
July 1, 2003... Researchers at Yale University (New Haven, CT) have taken an important step toward monolithically integrating long-wave light-emitting components into a commercially established semiconductor substrate material for integrated optoelectronics by...

Scalable, high-power fiber laser produces coherent output. (Fiber Lasers).
July 1, 2003... High-power fiber-laser arrays can potentially produce tens or hundreds of kilowatts of output power, providing significant military capabilities. At the May Solid-State and Diode Laser Technology Review workshop, hosted by the Directed Energy...

Defocused microscope reveals macrophage antics. (Optical Microscopy).
July 1, 2003... By defocusing an optical microscope, researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) have reported a simpler and more direct method of analyzing the behavior of scavenging white blood cells than they say would...

Infrared cameras find hot spots in nuclear reactor. (Infrared Imaging).
July 1, 2003... The French Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA) has released the first infrared (IR) images of plasma-facing components in the Tore Supra nuclear-fusion reactor (Cadarache, France) obtained using a network of IR cameras supplied by CEDIP...

Small probe takes OCT deep into the body. (Bio-Optics).
July 1, 2003... A research team at the University of California-Irvine (UCI; Irvine, CA) is using a five-year, $2.9 million National Institutes of Health grant to develop a microscopic probe for detecting and treating precancerous and malignant tumors in...

QC laser sweeps frequency in nanoseconds. (Spectroscopy).
July 1, 2003... At the heart of a high-resolution infrared-absorption spectrometer developed by researchers at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland) is a pulsed quantum-cascade (QC) laser operating at 10.25 [micro]m. The laser and instrument...

Series connections make OLEDs scalable. (Lighting).
July 1, 2003... Researchers at General Electric (GE; Niskayuna, NY) have been developing blue-emitting organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) coated with white-emitting phosphors as a candidate general-illumination source for the potentially large...

Nd:YV[O.sub.4] slab lasers process glass within. (Laser Machining).
July 1, 2003... Because glass is transparent over a wide spectral range, marking glass with laser light is an intriguing challenge. The applied radiation must be efficiently absorbed--for example, by using ultraviolet light. Alternatively, nonlinear absorption...

Gallium nitride carries infrared light. (Optical Waveguides).
July 1, 2003... The semiconductor materials gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) have found fame by becoming the basis of blue- and ultraviolet-emitting lasers and light-emitting diodes; the several-stories-tall full-color display at the...

Cell phone captures and projects images. (Laser Projectors).
July 1, 2003... Although cell phones and other small mobile devices can pack a lot of usefulness into a small package, miniaturization does nothing good for the visibility of their displays. One well-known way around this problem is to combine a microdisplay...

NIF laser produces record ultraviolet beam. (Laser: industry report).
July 1, 2003... The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; Livermore, CA) recently produced 10,400 J, or 10.4 kJ, of ultraviolet laser light in a single laser beamline, setting a world record for laser performance....

Novalux switches gears, gains $16 million in funding. (Laser: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Just a few months after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Novalux (Sunnyvale, CA) is back in business. The company has secured $16 million in venture-capital funding to continue developing and manufacturing a visible-laser version of...

Schwartz Electro-Optics files for chapter 11. (Laser: industry report).
July 1, 2003... According to a report in the May 23 Orlando Sentinel, Schwartz Electro-Optics (SEO, Orlando, FL) has filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors and plans to sell its military-contracting operation, which represents about 80% of its...

SpectRx applies interstitial technology to alcohol abuse. (Laser: industry report).
July 1, 2003... SpectRx (Norcross, GA), Boston University School of Public Health, and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles have been awarded a two-year, $1.5 million contract from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to develop a...

IPG Photonics. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... IPG Photonics (Oxford, MA) says its commercial-grade Ytterbium fiber laser achieved 300 W of low-noise, single-mode output power (1.08 [micro]m), a new record. This breakthrough increases by 50% the single-mode output from IPG's existing line...

The Optical Internetworking Forum. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... The Optical Internetworking Forum has approved a multisource tunable-laser implementation agreement that addresses module physical interface, communications interfaces, and optical performance parameters for continuous wavelength tunable laser...

CVI finds profitability and a new owner. (Optics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Not only is CVI Laser (Albuquerque, NM) seeing 20% growth in its business by expanding into contract manufacturing and assembly, the 30-year-old manufacturer of laser optics and opto-mechanical subsystems is under new ownership: Norwest Equity...

Nanosys. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... Nanosys (Palo Alto. CA) purchased from Yissum Research Development Company (Jerusalem, Israel) a license to use three nanotechnology patents developed by Uri Banin of Hebrew University (Jerusalem). Nanosys will invest up to $1.5 million in...

Optifab 2003 fills a gap in the United States. (Optics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... In response to a lack of U.S. trade shows devoted to optical fabrication, the American Precision Optics Manufacturers Association (APOMA; Rochester, NY) and SPIE--The International Society of Optical Engineering (Bellingham, WA) held the first...

High-precision optics enable short-wavelength x-ray lasers. (Optics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Using a series of high-precision optics supplied by Optical Surfaces (Surrey, England), the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI; Kyoto, Japan) has demonstrated the possibility of a compact pumping system for x-ray lasers in the...

Industry establishes MEMS steering group through SEMI. (Optics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Some 60 companies and organizations from Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific have moved to create an International MEMS Steering Group (IMSG), under the auspices of Semiconductor Equipment Materials International (SEMI; San Jose, CA)....

SID conference sees its way through a tough year. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
July 1, 2003... The final numbers for the 2003 annual meeting of the Society for Information Display (SID; Baltimore, MD, May 18-23) show that overall attendance declined moderately to 5700 from 6500 in 2002 and the number of exhibit booths dropped only...

Tsunami and PXIT merge optical-testing businesses. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Tsunami Photonics (Dublin, Ireland), specialists in fast-test-system software for photonic components, has acquired the PXI (PCI extensions for instrumentation) business of PXIT, a manufacturer of PXI-based modular test systems. The merged...

Sensors Unlimited awarded DOD contract. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Sensors Unlimited (Princeton, NJ) has received a U.S. Air Force contract for the first phase of a 33-month program to develop a high-frame-rate, high-bandwidth, low-noise, focal-plane-array and camera for active tracking, wavefront sensing,...

Three-Five Systems. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... Three-Five Systems (Tempe, AZ) is moving ahead with plans to spin off its microdisplay division. Brillian. Three-Five will provide Brillian with $22 million in initial funding and plans to publicly trade Brillian stock on Nasdaq....

Intevac. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... Intevac (Santa Clara. CA) has been awarded a four-year, $22.5 million contract for LIVAR sensor manufacturing and technology development for the U.S. Air Force's Systems for Airborne Laser Sensing and Analysis Program.

Japanese firms form OLED joint venture. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Optrex (Tokyo) and Nippon Seiki (Nagaoka, Japan) have formed a joint venture to build organic light-emitting-diode (OLED) displays and sell them to their respective parent companies. The new company, Adeon, will be equally owned by Optrex and...

Equinox takes optical imaging to Mars. (Imaging & detector: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Equinox Interscience (Golden, CO) has been awarded a $1.3 million contract from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a mineral identification and composition analyzer (MICA) for use on future Mars missions. MICA will combine multiple...

Opnext opens R&D center in Japan. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Opnext (Eatontown, NJ) has established an Advanced Optical Device Development Center (AODC), a research and development facility, in Totsuka, Japan. The center will focus primarily on advanced optical devices for next-generation optical...

Mediscience forms prostate cancer diagnosis subsidiary. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Mediscience Technology (Cherry Hill, NJ) has established a subsidiary intended to focus on the development of an optical-fiber-based system for the noninvasive diagnosis of prostate cancer. The new company, Proscreen, will initially embark on a...

Civcom and Xlight join forces for optical networking. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Civcom (Reston, VA), a developer of fast optical switches, and XLight Photonics (Tel Aviv, Israel), a provider of tunable 10-Gbit/s transponders, have agreed to merge. Civcom developed the industry's first ultrafast solid-state optical switch,...

Former Corning scientists to form research center. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Four former Corning scientists have been awarded 11.1 million [euro] (US$13 million) to set up a photonics research center at University College Cork, Ireland. The award is funded by the Science Foundation Ireland. The four-year project will...

kSaria. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... kSaria (Wilmington, MA) has selected TeraComm (Guilford, CT) as its exclusive manufacturer's representative in the eastern region of the United States for its optical fiber assemblies....

Arroyo Optics. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... Arroyo Optics (Santa Monica, CA) has appointed Hatch Graham as interim CEO and president. Graham brings more than 20 years of experience in telecommunications startups and other public companies and is currently chairman and CEO of Bandwidth9...

APA Optics. (Also in the news ...).
July 1, 2003... Michael Sonaco has been named director of sales and marketing for APA Optics (Minneapolis, MN). Sonaco has more than 20 years of experience in the communications industry, most recently as president and CEO of C&L Communications.

Virtek changes course of FONA business. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... Virtek Vision International (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada), a developer of fiberoptic nucleic acid (FONA) technologies for use in genomic applications, has eliminated all 12 of its FONA-related positions as the company refocuses on its core laser...

MEMSCAP partners with GalayOr for digital VOA. (Fiberoptics: industry report).
July 1, 2003... MEMS developer MEMSCAP (Grenoble, France) is partnering with GalayOr (Tel Aviv, Israel), a provider of all-silicon optical system-on-a-Chip, to develop a new generation of optical products, starting with an integrated closed-loop digital...

Specialty fiber draws renewed interest: new designs and applications give fiber makers new markets. (WDM Solutions).
July 1, 2003... The days of booming demand for transmission fibers such as SMF-28, DSF, and NZDSF are a distant memory. New network builds are few and large fiber production facilities have closed their doors. In contrast, optical fiber for specific, if...

Can three people grow a business? (business forum).
July 1, 2003... Q: We produce a very good laser but are now down to only three people. What can we do to grow the business? A: Most likely you are at subcritical mass as a stand-alone company. Merging your company with an established laser company could be...

Algorithm determines efficiency of fiber-coupling calculation. (software & computing).
July 1, 2003... Diffraction-capable beam propagation in commercial optical design and analysis software is a significant feature that enables a user to perform sophisticated and meaningful fiber-coupling (and other) analyses. However, this is often a...

Amplified ultrafast lasers move out of the laboratory: the unique properties of ultrafast pulses are opening up a host of new applications, from materials processing to medicine. (Ultrafast Lasers).
July 1, 2003... Most materials have an electron-phonon coupling time of between a picosecond and a nanosecond with typical heat-diffusion times of a nanosecond to a microsecond. (1) Interactions between light and matter that are shorter than the time required...

Lasers etch elegant patterns in flat-panel displays: excimer and solid-state lasers offer several advantages over conventional etching processes used in display manufacturing. But when it comes to OLEDs, the jury is still out. (Optoelectronic applications: micropatterning).
July 1, 2003... Laser patterning in microelectronics manufacturing is not a new concept. In the 1980s, excimer lasers were used to pattern indium tin oxide (ITO) coatings on computer touch screens and for making slot antennas (a radiating element formed by a...

Mature PMT technology offers sensitivity for emerging needs. (Photomultipliers).
July 1, 2003... Despite their age, photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are still preferred when low-light-level detection is required. Over the years, the development of PMTs has yielded better sensitivity, faster response time, smaller package size, and more...

Special effects: third-order nonlinear optical effects, once mainly a threat to optics and performance, are now essential to many advanced applications. (Back to basics: nonlinear optics).
July 1, 2003... As dramatic as they might be, the phenomena of second-order nonlinear optics (NLO) seem intuitive once they become familiar. The situation changes when a third incident beam is added. Third-order NLO phenomena encompass a wide range of...

Optical surface analyzer inspects transparent wafers: an optical surface analyzer that combines an ellipsometer, reflectometer, scatterometer, and optical profiler into a single optical head can inspect transparent wafers with no signal degradation from wafer back-reflections. (Surface Analyzers).
July 1, 2003... Transparent wafers are widely used in the high-technology industry for the production of light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, surface-acoustic-wave devices, and high-power, high-temperature, and high-frequency electronics. Transparent materials...

Uncooled devices challenge designers: avoiding the need for cooling and temperature stabilization reduces transmitter power requirements, cuts costs, and allows operation in a wide range of environments. (Optical networking: uncooled devices).
July 1, 2003... Operating temperature is a key factor in determining both performance and practicality of a laser-diode transmitter. However, the tradeoffs work in opposite directions. Temperature control tends to improve performance by reducing threshold...

Laser systems benefit from OEM-vendor cooperation. (UV Optics).
July 1, 2003... As applications for ultraviolet-laser systems broaden in medical, wafer processing, atmospheric detection, and electronics manufacturing, the accompanying rise in performance requirements pushes laser system manufacturers and their suppliers to...

Laser-welding station. (new products).
July 1, 2003... A new generation of the StarWeld manual/performance series laser-welding stations includes microwelding and a material-specific pulse-shaping option. The microwelding option can weld thin foils or wires in the 10-[micro]m range or copper with a...

Evaluation module. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The TCS230EVM evaluation module enables designers to evaluate the company's TCS230 programmable color light-to-frequency converter. The module consists of a lens module with a white-LED illuminator, a Parallax Board of Education (BOE) module...

Connectable LED modules. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Each StripLED connectable LED module contains four bright, wide-angle (85[degrees]) LEDtronics SpiderLEDs, one 3-in. double-ended connector harness for daisy-chain assembly, and a pre-applied strip of 3M double-side foam tape for "peel and...

Laser system. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The Lightning High Dynamic Laser System utilizes a limited divergence Rofin SLAB series laser to provide cutting speeds up to 11,800 ipm with 3-g acceleration in x-y axes. The system uses a MICROMach controller. The system cuts a maximum sheet...

Etalons. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Both solid and air-spaced etalons are available. An advanced process provides a thickness accuracy that can be controlled down to [+ or -] 0.3 [micro]m. Using IBS coating, the etalons can be used in high-power-density applications such as...

Nonlinear crystal. (new products).
July 1, 2003... BIBO is a newly developed borate nonlinear optical crystal with a large nonlinear coefficient (1.5 to 2 times that of BBO and 3.5 to 4 times that of LBO). It is insensitive to moisture and has a wide transmission range of 286 to 2500 nm. It is...

Integrating spheres. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Integrating sphere designs for precision radiometric and photometric measurements are available in sizes ranging from 1 to 75 in. in diameter. The spheres include a choice of high-reflectance BaS[O.sub.4] coating, Optowhite, or Zenith PTFE...

Wafer measurement system. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The MicroLine300 system provides manual critical dimension measurements for semiconductor wafers and photomasks. It measures features from 0.5 to 40 [micro]m in size using a 100x objective lens and up to 800 [micro]m at 5x. The system includes...

Megapixel digital cameras. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The PL-A650 and PL-A660 are a new series of PixeLINK high-resolution CMOS cameras. Available in color and monochrome versions, the cameras are based on Kodak 1/2-in. 1.3-megapixel sensors. The sensors have a 1280 x 1024 pixel array with square...

IR polarizers. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Infrared polarizers are available with substrates including calcium fluoride, barium fluoride, zinc selenide, KRS-5, and polyethylene. The polarizers range from 1 to 250 [micro]m. Holographic polarizers have high extinction and contrast ratios....

Trace-gas-impurity analyzers. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The MultiGas Purity trace-impurity analyzer can now detect low levels of various contaminants in high-purity bulk nitrous oxide ([N.sub.2]O). These analyzers are designed for use in semiconductor-device and flat-panel-display manufacturing. The...

Vacuum preload bearings. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Vacuum Preloaded (VPL) Air Bearings provide machine designers with the potential to combine x and y linear motion and theta rotation all on one flat surface. This eliminates the need to stack several separate stages. The bearings are designed...

Monochrome machine-vision cameras. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The IK-53N and IK-52N are two new monochrome, high-resolution (768 x 494) cameras designed for machine vision applications. Both cameras measure 29-mm square and weigh 1.59 oz. The IK-52N has a 1/2-in. CCD, while the IK-53N has a 1/3-in. CCD....

Tunable THz laser source. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The new tunable terahertz (THz) laser source delivers narrow band, broadly tunable CW output around 800 [micro]m. The desktop-sized device delivers from 100 to 1,000 [micro]m, often referred to as the "terahertz gap." The source is designed for...

Extinction-ratio monitor. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The extinction-ratio monitor measures polarization extinction ratios of laser modules with connectorized PM fiber. It also measures the incidence angle between laser polarization and the eigenaxis of PMF in a nondestructive manner, and the...

Swept-laser spectral analyzer. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The tunable laser TSL-500 uses an external-cavity design that provides SNR of >60 dB, >10-mW output power over the full 100-nm tuning range, and a wavelength accuracy of Santec, Komaki, Japan Write in 215 or go to...

Photodetectors. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Direct-current >10-GHz GaAs and InGaAs battery-biased photodetectors are now available. The GaAs photodetectors have a spectral bandwidth of 450 to 870 nm. The InGaAs photodetectors have a spectral bandwidth of 1000 to 1650 nm. Models are...

Collimation testers. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Shear-plate collimation testers examine the collimation of laser light or measure wavefront curvature and divergence/ convergence magnitude. Each tester is optimized for use from 200 to 2500 nm, depending on aperture size. Standard aperture...

Spectrograph. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The Shamrock 303i boasts a number of unique benefits for spectroscopy applications, including user-friendly operation, a unique USB interface, optics optimized for imaging, intuitive graphical software user interface, and an extensive range of...

Partitions. (new products).
July 1, 2003... Ever-Guard partitions are patented, lightweight, portable, metal multi-panel partitions. The partitions come with standard "pivot-and-lock" roller braces for portability and "quick-connect" light-blocking hinges for building large containment...

Beamsplitters and polarizing optics. (new products).
July 1, 2003... A full line of beamsplitter cubes and plates (laser line, broadband) includes nonpolarizing beamsplitter cubes and plates (laser line, broadband, hybrid); high-power UV polarizing cubes; high-power polarizing cubes for YAG and harmonic...

Fiberoptic connectors. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The 8308 SC and 8208 FC ultra-high-temperature hot-melt fiberoptic connectors are designed for use in central office, head end, premises, or outside plant environments. They have been tested to 100[degrees]C. The connectors contain a...

Adhesive. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The EP21ANHT two-component, room-temperature curing epoxy adhesive has a thermal conductivity of more than 22 BTU/in./ft2/h/[degrees]F. It has a 1:1 mix ratio by weight or volume and has electrical insulation properties. Service operating...

Laser cutting system. (new products).
July 1, 2003... A "super-size" version of the CL-707 high-speed laser cutting system offers a combination of a linear motor drive with an 8 x 20-ft cutting-table size. The table allows up to five 4 x 8-ft sheets or two standard 5 x 10-ft sheets to be processed...

Digital cameras. (new products).
July 1, 2003... The AxioCam HRm is a digital camera with 14-bit digitization and a microscanning feature. The AxioCam MRm is a scientific digital camera with 12-bit digitization. Both are designed for photomicrography in biomedical research. The cameras...