Laser Focus World articles from March 2002

Laser Focus World archives from March 2002

A world of possibilities. (editor's desk).
March 1, 2002... Last year's collapse of the Optical communications marketplace has left most photonics firms wondering what this year will bring. One consequence of the dramatically different business environment has been a change in management priorities:...

Silicon microdischarge arrays live longer. (news breaks).
March 1, 2002... Silicon microdischarge devices have inverted pyramidal cathodes that cause a gas such as neon (Ne) to emit light (see Laser Focus World, September 2000, p. 32). The devices have been made into very small arrays with lifetimes of a few minutes;...

Aluminum pushes gallium nitride-based emitters to the deep ultraviolet. (news breaks).
March 1, 2002... Gallium nitride (GaN)-based light-emitting diodes and lasers typically rely on the addition of indium (In) to determine their wavelength; the less indium included, the shorter the wavelength is, with 360 nm the shortest possible. Lowering the...

Winners of Young Investigator Award announced at Photonics West 2002. (news breaks).
March 1, 2002... The recipients of this year's Young Investigator Award were announced at Photonics West 2002 (San Jose, CA) in January. The award, presented annually in memory of Heather Williamson Messenger, former executive editor of Laser Focus World, is...

Gallium selenide emits coherent terahertz radiation. (news breaks).
March 1, 2002... In a development that will further stimulate the already expanding fields of terahertz imaging and spectroscopy, researchers at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR), Shandong University (Jinan, China), the Air Force Research Laboratory...

Porous liquid-crystal and silicon mirror is electrically tunable. (news breaks).
March 1, 2002... Sharon Weiss and Phillipe Fauchet of the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY) have developed a silicon-based mirror that has an electrically tunable 2-nm resonance, and thus a tunable reflectivity. Early experiments verify this effect, and...

Microsphere waveguide channels light via resonance. (news breaks).
March 1, 2002... Researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Ibaraki, Japan) have demonstrated light propagation in a new type of waveguide similar to but distinct from a photonic-crystal waveguide. Consisting of...

Photon plasmatron deposits diamond in open air. (Thin Films)(Cover Story).
March 1, 2002... Diamond layers produced by chemical-vapor deposition (CVD) have been used in industry for more than two decades as a result of the outstanding properties of this material. Diamond excels in certain applications because of its high thermal...

Pulses produce purple points. (optoelectronics world news).
March 1, 2002... When focused, all ultrafast pulsed laser beam becomes a pen capable of writing microstructures within glass. The structures arise when the glass at the beam focus melts, forms color centers, or breaks down in some other way. Different processes...

Injection-laser inventors attend peace symposium. (Conference).
March 1, 2002... Last month, the developers of injection-laser technology gathered in San Diego, CA, along with their fellow 2001 Kyoto Prize Laureates for a symposium at the recently opened Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San...

Self-interference method yields sensitive spectral microscopy. (Microscopy).
March 1, 2002... Researchers at Boston University have successfully demonstrated a microscopy technique that may enable subcellular optical imaging with resolution on the order of a few nanometers. "There are a lot of very nice techniques to get below the...

Keck laser guide star improves seeing in Hawaii. (Astronomy).
March 1, 2002... Astronomers have made a leap in ground-based observatory technology with the installation and successful testing of a laser guide-star system at the W. M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The effects of Earth's turbulent atmosphere...

CW imager targets medicine. (Terahertz Imaging).
March 1, 2002... A collaboration between several German research groups has resulted in what is claimed to be the first terahertz imaging spectrometer based on continuous-wave (cw) terahertz radiation. Three of the groups are based in Braunschweig (Institut fur...

Photonics West reflects renewed optimism. (optoelectronics world news).
March 1, 2002... Vendors and attendees were surprised by the air of optimism and the size of Photonics West 2002 (San Jose, CA; Jan. 19-25). Despite sagging economic conditions worldwide, the show attracted 14,674 attendees, including a record number of...

Bimorph mirror helps capture biological tissue images. (optoelectronics world news).
March 1, 2002... Biological tissue scatters light strongly, preventing imaging of subsurface features such as tumors. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) relies on broadband light and interferometry to overcome the effects of scattering of photons in tissue,...

Plastic lenses read data with blue light. (Optical Data Storage).
March 1, 2002... TOKYO--Konica Corp. has developed a plastic lens for optical pickups that is ideal for the blue-violet-emitting lasers designed for high-capacity 22.5-Gbyte next-generation optical disks. Two 0.85-numerical-aperture aspheric plastic lenses are...

Encryption pattern codes paper images. (Japan watch).
March 1, 2002... TOKYO--Toppan Printing Co. Ltd. has developed a new image-coding technology for paper that is an extension of an image-coding technology it developed for plastic cards. The technology involves layering two sand-patterned encoded images to...

Air-hockey robot plays optoelectronically. (Image Processing).
March 1, 2002... OSAKA--The Advanced Technology Research Laboratories at Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and the Ishikawa Research Laboratory at Tokyo University have jointly developed a high-speed image-processing sensor called "digital smart pixel...

Emcore sees light at end of tunnel. (laser industry report).
March 1, 2002... Emcore Corp. (Somerset, NJ) reported revenues for its fiscal 2002 first quarter ended Dec. 31 of $19.1 million and a net loss of $17.7 million. In the corresponding quarter of fiscal year 2001, the company had revenues of $39.1 million and a...

Missile-detection system completes tests. (laser industry report).
March 1, 2002... BAE Systems (Nashua, NH) tactical-aircraft directable infrared-counter-measure system (TADIRCM), a low-profile, laser-based IR countermeasure system, has successfully completed key tests for the U.S. Navy--including hostile-missile detection...

Slight profit decrease at Rofin-Sinar. (laser industry report).
March 1, 2002... Rofin-Sinar Technologies Inc. (Hamburg, Germany and Plymouth, MI) reported $48.7 million in net sales for the first quarter ended Dec. 31, a 9.4% decrease over the comparable quarter of fiscal 2001. Gross profit totaled $17.8 million, or 36.5%...

LaserComm secures $21 million in funding. (laser industry report).
March 1, 2002... LaserComm (Plano, TX) has secured $21 million in fourth-round funding from internal investors, led by Morgan Stanley Venture Partners (New York, NY and Menlo Park, CA) and Index Ventures (Geneva, Switzerland). The new capital will allow...

JDS Uniphase Corp. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... JDS Uniphase Corp. (Ottawa, Ont., Canada and San Jose, CA) has announced a family of temperature-tunable, directly modulated lasers (DMLs) and has added to its fixed-wavelength product line for metro, access, and CATV markets....

IEEE. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... The IEEE (Piscataway, NJ) has named 2000 Nobel Physics Laureate Herbert Kroemer as recipient of the 2002 IEEE Medal of Honor for his pioneering work in heterostructure-based transistors and light-emitting devices....

Picolight Inc. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Picolight Inc. (Boulder, CO) announced availability of the first long-wavelength (1310-nm) optical transceivers for metropolitan-access network and optical Ethernet applications....

Lumenis Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel) has signed an agreement with Boston Scientific Corp. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Lumenis Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel) has signed an agreement with Boston Scientific Corp. Boston Scientific Corp. (Boston, MA) for the exclusive distribution of its holmium lasers and accessories in Japan....

Cabletel Communications Corp. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Cabletel Communications Corp. (Markham, Ont., Canada) has been appointed by fSONA Communications Corp. (Richmond, BC, Canada) as a prime distributor of fSONA's free-space optical transmission products to the cable television, broadcast, and...

DuPont photomasks upgrades China facility. (optics industry report).
March 1, 2002... DuPont Photomasks Inc. (Round Rock, TX) has announced plans to significantly upgrade the capability of its joint-venture photomask-manufacturing facility, DuPont Photomasks Company Ltd. (Shanghai, China), to better serve the growing...

Advanced FLIR imagery to enhance flight safety. (optics industry report).
March 1, 2002... DRS Technologies Inc. (Parsippany, NJ) has received additional funding to provide engineering development models (EDMs) for the virtual imaging system for approach and landing (VISUAL) supporting U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. Based on advanced...

Philips and MobilEye collaborate on driver assistance. (optics industry report).
March 1, 2002... Philips Semiconductors (San Jose, CA), and MobilEye (Mountain View, CA) are forming a strategic partnership to manufacture a highly integrated system-on-chip solution for automotive driver-assistance applications, taking the first step toward...

Marine skeleton crystals may help telecom. (optics industry report).
March 1, 2002... Scientists from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs (Murray Hill, NJ) have discovered that chalk-like calcite crystals in the skeletons of marine creatures known as brittlestars act as armor as well as optical receptors for an all-seeing compound...

Hikari Glass Co. Ltd. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Hikari Glass Co. Ltd. (Chiba, Japan) has opened a new office and warehouse in Aliso Viejo, CA....

Asahi Glass. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Asahi Glass. (Tokyo, Japan) cut its earnings forecast for 2001-2002 to a $67 million loss, the company's first ever net loss for a business year, according to Reuters.

Dalsa to buy CCD business from Royal Philips Electronics. (imaging & detector industry report).
March 1, 2002... Dalsa Corp. (Waterloo, Ont., Canada) will acquire the CCD Image Sensors Business of Royal Philips Electronics (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). This purchase is expected to include intellectual property, technology, assets, product lines, and...

Indigo Systems teams with Autoliv. (imaging & detector industry report).
March 1, 2002... Indigo Systems (Santa Barbara, CA), a manufacturer of infrared cameras and telecommunications devices, has formed a strategic partnership with Autoliv (Stockholm, Sweden), a provider of automotive safety systems. Their alliance is designed to...

PFE gets $4.3 million in third-round funding. (imaging & detector industry report).
March 1, 2002... Printable Field Emitters (PFE; Didcot, England) has secured US$4.3 million in third-round funding from a consortium that includes NIF Ventures (Tokyo, Japan) and 3i and Quester (both of London, England). The money will be used to complete the...

DuPont boosts manufacturing of display materials. (imaging & detector industry report).
March 1, 2002... DuPont Microcircuit Materials (MCM; Wilmington, DE) has announced plans to expand manufacturing facilities at its Manati, Puerto Rico, site for production of photoprintable composition materials used in the plasma display-panel market....

PerkinElmer sheds businesses. (imaging & detector industry report).
March 1, 2002... PerkinElmer (Boston, MA) is selling its Detection Systems business to L-3 Communications (New York, NY) for approximately $100 million. Detection Systems is a leading supplier of x-ray inspection systems and is expected to generate revenues of...

Zight Corp. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Zight Corp. (Boulder, CO; formerly Colorado Microdisplay) is shutting down.

IBM Corp. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... IBM Corp. (Armonk, NY) led the U.S. patent list for the ninth consecutive year, with 3411 patents on displays and other devices issued to the company in 2001.

Microvision Inc. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Microvision Inc. (Bothell, WA) has begun shipping its see-through head-worn microdisplay; uses for the device will include low-vision correction and surgical workstations.

Ritekom Photonics opens first U.S. office. (fiberoptics industry report).
March 1, 2002... RiteKom Photonics Corp. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) has entered the U.S. market with a new office in Foster City, CA. The company intends to establish a local presence with networking-equipment makers and carriers by offering transceivers, optical fiber,...

Tellabs and White Rock collaborate in metro. (fiberoptics industry report).
March 1, 2002... Under the terms of a newly signed original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement, Tellabs (Naperville, IL) will integrate White Rock Networks (Richardson, TX) products into the Tellabs optical transport system to create an enhanced metro dense...

Fonar and Biophan collaborate. (fiberoptics industry report).
March 1, 2002... Biophan Technologies (Rochester, NY) announced that Raymond Damadian, co-inventor of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and CEO of Fonar Corp. (Melville, NY), a manufacturer of MRI diagnostic equipment, will work with Wilson Greatbatch, inventor...

VSK Photonics extends financing round. (fiberoptics industry report).
March 1, 2002... VSK Photonics Inc. (Lake Forest, CA) has extended its Series A financing round with an additional $8.3 million, led by Rustic Canyon Ventures (Santa Monica, CA). Existing investors Morgenthaler (Menlo Park, CA) and Intel Capital (Santa Clara,...

Silicon Light Machines, a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Silicon Light Machines, a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor (San Jose, CA), took another step into the optical-communication market with its first optical-networking sub-system, a dynamic-gain equalizer (DGE) for dense...

American Fiber Systems. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... American Fiber Systems (AFS; Rochester, NY) announced that its Salt Lake City metropolitan dark-fiber network is operational and already in use. The nearly 40-mile AFS dark-fiber ring winds through Salt Lake City's metropolitan area and...

Industrial Fiber Optics. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Industrial Fiber Optics (Tempe, AZ) has begun manufacturing and marketing fiberoptic couplers/splitters for plastic optical fiber.

Altra Broadband. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Altra Broadband (Irvine, CA) has completed a dense subcarrier multiplexing (xDSM) transceiver board for broadband networking that has been used to transmit data at speeds greater than 1 Gbit/s on fiberoptic-communication links with 3.5-km reach...

Praxair Inc. (Also in the news ...).
March 1, 2002... Praxair Inc. (Danbury, CT) has opened a new demonstration facility in Niagara Falls, NY that offers fiberoptics manufacturers first-hand operating experience and evaluation of helium recovery technology.

Smart amplifiers adapt to changing loads in WDM systems; dynamic networks require amplifiers that sense changes in the transmitted signal and automatically adjust their optical properties to maintain consistent amplifier characteristics. (Optical Networking).
March 1, 2002... One early allure of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers was the possibility that they would make it easy to upgrade fiberoptic systems. The hope was that transmission capacity could be upgraded merely by adding new terminal equipment for extra...

Multivariate optical elements simplify spectroscopy: interference filters with carefully designed spectral properties perform optical computations for spectroscopic analysis that replace complex mathematical computations. (Spectroscopy).
March 1, 2002... Pattern-recognition techniques can be applied to optical spectra of complex mixtures (gasoline, blood, environmental samples, and so on) for the purpose of detecting the presence of specific compounds, measuring their concentrations, or...

CPM enables sizing of submicron particles: the simple structure of a channel photomultiplier is robust and produces a low background count. The lack of a lag time enables the device to be used for backscatter measurements of particle sizes in solution. (PMTs).
March 1, 2002... The rapid growth of life-science research has increased the need for fast, accurate instruments capable of measuring the size of bio-molecules and organic solids as small as 1 nm in suspension over a wide concentration range. Traditional...

Dynamic interferometry handles vibration. (Vibration control).
March 1, 2002... Mechanical vibration and turbulent airflow present significant problems for most interferometric test methods. Conditions on the factory floor and in industrial clean rooms with high-capacity air filtration systems, for example, can hamper the...

Compliant MEMS provide stiff competition. (MEMS).
March 1, 2002... In the last few years, optical networking has spawned new applications for the technology known as MEMS (microelectromechanical systems). With tiny mechanical devices, such as sensors and mirrors, embedded in semiconductor chips, MEMS...

Silicon fiber v-grooves. (new products).
March 1, 2002... Wet-etch bulk micromachined devices, including fiber v-grooves and passive micro-mechanical structures are now available. They can be supplied as complete wafers or as diced and packaged components in waffle packs. Custom designs are available....

Motorized IR camera lenses. (new products).
March 1, 2002... Motorized IR camera lenses are now offered from stock for both the MWIR (3 to 5 [micro]m) and LWIR (8 to 12 [micro]m). A variety of focal lengths and F/#s are available. Lenses are designed for use with most focal-plane arrays, thermal-imaging...

Spectral reflectometer. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The McPherson spectral reflectometer measures absorbance, transmittance, and reflectance of diverse optical samples. Units are available for the vacuum and extreme UV and for the UV-Vis-IR. Samples up to 350-mm diameter are accommodated. The...

Color digital camera for microscopy. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The Digital Eclipse DXM1200 provides digital imaging and documentation for neuroscience and microscopy imaging. Designed for professional users who must take large numbers of micrographs and store them efficiently, the DXM uses new Inter Pixel...

Programmable framegrabber. (new products).
March 1, 2002... XSYS is a PCI and CompactPCI framegrabber. Also available as a stand-alone box, the board supports RS422 or LVDS IO path up to 100 Hz. XSYS accepts image data from one to four area or line-scan cameras and provides monochrome or RGB images. The...

White LED. (new products).
March 1, 2002... Toshiba's TLWA1100 white surface-mount LED, jointly developed by Toshiba Corp. and Toyoda Gosei Co. Ltd., integrates InGaN, phosphors, and packaging technology with a 380-nm UV short peak-wavelength chip. The reflow-solderable diode comes in a...

CMOS image sensors. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The ADCS-1120 and -2120 CMOS image sensors are high-sensitivity monochrome devices that can operate at low-light levels for biometric and machine-vision applications. The 1120 has VGA resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, and the 2120 has CIF...

Broadband antireflective coating. (new products).
March 1, 2002... ARB2-IR is a hard, scratch-resistant antireflective coating for quartz, BK7, and similar materials for use in the infrared range up to 1650 nm. Optics coated with ARB2-IR have a residual reflectance of Linos Photonics, Goettingen, Germany...

Electroluminescent material. (new products).
March 1, 2002... Luxprint 8100 series thick-film materials for electroluminescent (EL) lighting use a new polymer film to improve brightness for EL lamps. The series includes the 8152 blue/green, 8154 yellow/green, and 8150 white phosphors, as well as the 8153...

Camera. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The Dalstar 6M18 camera provides high-sensitivity, 12-bit imaging with 3000 x 2000 spatial resolution at up to 18 frames/s. It is designed for film scanning, electronics manufacturing inspection, packaging inspection, and document archiving....

Optical adhesives. (new products).
March 1, 2002... A series of optical adhesives cures in 1 to 10 s with shrinkage as low as 0.2%. They form bonds with a typical tensile strength of 3000 psi. They are available for bonding glass, metal, plastic, and fiberoptics, require no postbake, and have a...

Uncooled IR camera. (new products).
March 1, 2002... An uncooled, microbolometer, longwave IR camera is based on amorphous silicon and sensitive in the 8- to 12-[micro]m band. It has a 320 x 240 format and a pitch of 47 [micro]m. It operates at a frame rate of 50 Hz, has a sensitivity of ...

X-Y stage. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The T-300 X-Y stage is designed for applications such as 300-mm wafer positioning and high-precision photonic component assembly. Its completely noncontact design uses air bearing ways, noncontact linear encoders, and sinusoidally commutated...

Liquid light guide. (new products).
March 1, 2002... A bifurcated liquid light guide provides the uniformity of a multilegged fiber guide. A nonimaging optical system provides even distribution of energy to each leg for curing multiple sites simultaneously using a single light source. Exfo...

Microvia drill. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The Model 5385 C[O.sub.2] laser microvia drill is a single-head drilling system with a pulse repetition rate of up to 100 kHz. It can drill vias of 75 to 200 [micro]m at a rate of >12,000 per min in glass-reinforced resin dielectric material...

NIR spectrograph. (new products).
March 1, 2002... A temperature-stabilized spectrograph for use in the near infrared is based on an InGaAs array. The portable device uses a miniature fiberoptic input and has a USB interface. Windows-based acquisition software is included, and a line of...

Image recognition board. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The NeuroSight embedded vision board has built-in capabilities for high-speed image recognition. It uses a CMOS sensor for video acquisition, a Zero Instruction Set Computing neural network for pattern learning and recognition, and an FPGA for...

Image sensor. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The KAF-3200ME combines indium tin oxide and microlenses on a single CCD sensor. Peak QE is 85%, with a 49% improvement in QE for blue wavelengths and 25% for near infrared. It has 6.8-[micro]m square pixels in an array of 2184 x 1510 and is...

UV LED. (new products).
March 1, 2002... A UV LED is based on GaN and has a peak wavelength of 400 nm with a spectral bandwidth of 20 nm. A 20-mA drive current with forward voltage of 3.2 V provides typical luminous intensity of 1800 mcd with a viewing angle of 20 [degrees]. It is...

Power supplies. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The EK series of dc power supplies has a voltage range of 1 to 60 kV at 600 W. They use air as the primary dielectric medium and have arc sensing and quench circuitry to combat arcing conditions. They have low ripple and noise and fast response...

Vision software. (new products).
March 1, 2002... Sherlock 6.1 is a Windows-based software package that allows users to develop sophisticated machine-vision applications. It supports the PCI framegrabber PC-CamLink and allows users to include Visual Basic Script code. It accommodates line-scan...

Fiberoptic switch. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The QuickSwitch 4186 is a fiberoptic ST duplex interface A/B/C/ switch. It connects a workstation or device to three other devices or networks, with internal circuitry ensuring isolation among the devices. It has an RS232 serial...

Non-UV-blocking lamps. (new products).
March 1, 2002... A line of quartz halogen lamps blocks no-UV or near-infrared radiation and operates from 300 to 4800 nm. They come in standard and custom configurations with output of 10 to 400 W in stand-alone to high-reflectivity gold types with compatible...

CCD scan camera. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The HV-D30 is a three-CCD interlaced-scan camera for industrial and other applications. It measures 65 x 65 x 80 mm, weighs 400 g, and has horizontal resolution of 800 TV lines. It has a 12-bit analog-digital converter, 14-bit processing, and a...

Spectroscopy system. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The IR-6416 multichannel laser pulse spectroscopy system has 64 detector elements and 16 external inputs to provide 80 channels of data acquisition from laser pulse events. Coupled with a dispersion grating, it produces spectra from 2 to 20...

High-speed photodiodes. (new products).
March 1, 2002... New high-speed PIN photodiodes are intended for integration into the receivers and transceivers of optical communications systems operating at OC-192 (10 Gbit/s) and OC-768 (40 Gbit/s). In the 1300- to 1550-nm range, the photodiodes are...

Cable polisher. (new products).
March 1, 2002... The APC 100 series abrasive polishing cloth requires only one polishing step for fiberoptic cable connectors and is designed for use by less skilled workers. It is designed to work with any connector type, any epoxy type, and any puck in both...

VCSEL wafer probe system. (new products).
March 1, 2002... A new VCSEL wafer probe system provides precise optical and electrical measurement of VCSELs at wafer level, helping reduce manufacturing time and costs. The system offers rapid 400-point L-I-V characterization, including threshold current and...

Pneumatic fiber-alignment stage. (new products).
March 1, 2002... A new range of pneumatic linear translation stages for fiber-alignment applications has been introduced. The stages can rapidly move up to 50 lb of equipment up to 75 mm and position it with 2-[micro]m repeatability. Lightweight aluminum...