Laser Focus World articles from March 2004

Laser Focus World archives from March 2004

Changing views.(editor's desk)
March 1, 2004... If the concept of a rollable and foldable electronic newspaper is appealing, or a room with electronic wallpaper able to display artwork then switch to become a room-sized TV screen ("surround scene" instead of "surround sound"?), it's possible...

Proton beam writes erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... Along with sol-gel, femtosecond-laser-pulse, and other established techniques for fabricating erbium-doped waveguide amplifiers, now add proton-beam writing. Researchers at the University of Hong Kong (Kowloon, Hong Kong) and the National...

For field-emitter displays, closed-tip carbon nanotubes look better.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... Field-emitter displays (FEDs), in which electrons leaking from arrays of microscopic tips in a vacuum excite phosphors, were once touted as the next-generation replacement for liquid-crystal displays. Problems with the photolithographic...

Multiwavelength laser source scales easily.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... A multiwavelength semiconductor-laser source developed by engineers at Peleton Photonic Systems (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) has properties such as small size and high scalability that show promise for use in dense wavelength-division multiplexing...

Low-index photonic-crystal waveguides yield low-loss, single-mode transmission.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... Researchers at the Friedrich-Schiller University (Jena, Germany) have obtained low losses on the order of 1.7 dB/mm and quasi-single-mode propagation in a straight, low-index-contrast, photonic-crystal waveguide fabricated using niobium...

Waveguide allows higher photon energies from argon ions.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... By using a waveguide geometry to limit plasma-induced laser-beam defocusing, researchers at JILA, University of Colorado, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Boulder, CO) have generated high-order harmonics at...

'Funryu' allows 808-nm laser-diode bar to reach 255-W output.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... Researchers at Hamamatsu Photonics (Shizuoka, Japan) and Osaka University (Osaka, Japan) have developed a new type of heat sink a mere 1.1 mm thick that has allowed them to push the continuous-wave (CW) output power of an 808-nm-emitting...

Solar cell, heal thyself.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... If made practical, amorphous and polycrystalline sheet solar cells could end up perched atop many a commercial or residential roof. But the devices, which can range up to a square meter in size, suffer from reduced efficiency caused by...

Gallium nitride-based LED may emit white light intrinsically.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... Two predominant ways to get white light from LEDs now exist. In one, a blue or UV-emitting LED is combined with a phosphor to produce an approximation of the white-light spectrum. In the other, the light from separate blue-, green-, and...

Stimulated Raman emission and wavelength conversion observed in silicon.(newsbreaks)
March 1, 2004... Building upon a previous demonstration of spontaneous Raman light emission from silicon waveguides (see Laser Focus World, April 2003, p. 19), researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles, in an effort supported by DARPA (the Defense...

Catastrophic 'fuse' effect may be preventable and have practical uses.(Fiberoptics)
March 1, 2004... New research suggests that a long-known phenomenon, in which a fiber burns out by absorbing its own input, may be caused by small amounts of dirt that produce air gaps between the fiber and its coupler. The effect, which can cause the...

Flowing neodymium offers improved heat management.(optoelectronics world news)
March 1, 2004... Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL; Livermore, CA) believe that they may be able to significantly reduce the weight, volume, cost, and technical complications of a so-called solid-state heat-capacity laser (SSHCL)...

Blue laser diodes are grown by MBE.(Semiconductor Lasers)
March 1, 2004... Researchers at Sharp Laboratories of Europe (SLE; Oxford, England), a subsidiary of Sharp (Osaka, Japan), have demonstrated what the company claims to be the world's first blue-violet laser diodes made by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). The...

Algorithm straightens snaky grooves.(Image Processing)
March 1, 2004... The investigation of a crime involving a gun often includes an analysis of the grooves carved into the bullet as it travels the length of the gun's barrel. Typically, experts visually compare the grooves between two bullets or a bullet and a...

Attendance and morale rebound at Photonics West 2004.(optoelectronics world news)
March 1, 2004... Photonics West 2004 was marked by a boost in both attendance (14,600, up from 12,300 in 2003) and exhibit-floor morale compared to the last couple of years. Particularly notable was a 20% increase among exhibitors of biomedical optics (BiOS),...

Attosecond laser pulses are measured by autocorrelation.(Ultrafast Pulses)
March 1, 2004... Attosecond laser pulses are expected to become an important tool for probing ultrafast processes in chemistry and biochemistry. To optimize their generation, a reliable measurement of the pulse duration is essential. Until now, second-order...

Minimizing taper improves light gathering.(optoelectronics world news)
March 1, 2004... For fiber-coupled charge-coupled-device (CCD) imagers operating over large fields of view, size matters. This is because the amount of light that actually reaches the detector decreases in inverse proportion to the square of the fiber-to-CCD...

Simple sensor characterizes surfaces.(Industrial Sensing)
March 1, 2004... If Thoreau were an engineer, he might find his niche working at the Department of Engineering in Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey), where researchers Billur Barshan and Tayfun Aytac are working on a simple approach to the identification and...

Light-emitting transistor offers direct megahertz modulation.(Semiconductor Emitters)
March 1, 2004... Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have invented a transistor in which the signal output of one of the terminals is IR light. Milton Feng, Nick Holonyak Jr., and Walid Hafez created the light-emitting...

Photonic-crystal laser has selectable wavelength.(Planar Optoelectronics)
March 1, 2004... Integrated optical components that produce light at several selectable wavelengths have been realized by lithographic means, according to a team of researchers from the University of Wurzburg (Wurzburg, Germany), Stanford University (Palo Alto,...

Capsule endoscopy to gain remote-control capability.(Microendoscopy)
March 1, 2004... Capsule endoscopy--using a miniature camera system placed inside a small capsule that is swallowed and then transmits images while it journeys through the gastrointestinal tract--is not a new concept. Given Imaging (Yokneam, Israel) has been...

Laser diode becomes all-optical flip-flop.(Optical Computing)
March 1, 2004... Scientists at the University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan) have demonstrated the first bistable laser diode in which both set and reset operations can be performed optically. (1) The existing design could potentially operate at 2 GHz, a speed that...

LEOMA goes into 'holding pattern'.(laser industry report)
March 1, 2004... After nearly 20 years as the North American laser industry's only industry trade group, the Laser and Electro-Optics Manufacturers' Association (LEOMA; Pacifica, CA) is going into hibernation. According to executive director Breck Hitz, the...

Intel invests in Cymer EUV technology.(laser industry report)
March 1, 2004... Cymer (San Diego, CA) and Intel (Santa Clara, CA) signed an agreement for Intel to provide $20 million in funding over the next three years to accelerate development of production-worthy extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography light sources....

Spectra-Physics partners with SPI on fiber lasers.(laser industry report)
March 1, 2004... Spectra-Physics (Mountain View, CA) and Southampton Photonics (Southampton, England) signed a formal agreement to market high-power 50- and 100-W fiber lasers to Spectra-Physics' extensive industrial customer base. According to the companies,...

Bush budget delays NIF demonstrations.(laser industry report)
March 1, 2004... The proposed federal budget from the George W. Bush administration would further postpone demonstration of fusion ignition--the primary rationale behind the $4 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF)--until 2014. Officials blamed the delay on...

Mesophotonics.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... Mesophotonics (Southampton, England), a developer of disruptive photonic-crystal technology, closed a $10 million second round of fund raising.

nLight Photonics.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... nLight Photonics (Vancouver, WA), a manufacturer of high-power semiconductor lasers, raised $12 million in its third round of financing.

Raytheon Company.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... Raytheon Company (Tucson, AZ) was awarded five separate U.S. Air Force contracts totaling $7.9 million to manufacture and deliver Paveway II Laser-Guided Bomb kit components for several international customers including Egypt, Oman, South...

APA Optics exits optics manufacturing.(optics industry report)
March 1, 2004... APA Optics (Minneapolis, MN) has discontinued its optics manufacturing operations, eliminating five positions at its Blaine, MN, facility, and has consolidated its fiberoptics communications activities in Blaine by eliminating three positions...

Xanoptix acquires AraLight.(optics industry report)
March 1, 2004... Xanoptix (Merrimack, NH), a developer of high-density parallel optics, has completed its acquisition of AraLight (Monroe Township, NJ) a manufacturer of high-density optoelectronic components. This acquisition strengthens Xanoptix's multichip...

Squid protein may enhance micro-optics.(optics industry report)
March 1, 2004... Researchers at the University of Hawaii and the University of California--Los Angeles have identified a light-reflecting protein in the Hawaiian bobtail squid that could prove useful in the design of microscopic optical devices. The squid has a...

II-VI.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... II-VI (Pittsburgh, PA) has appointed Vincent D, (Chuck) Mattera Jr. vice president and general manager of its Compound Semiconductor Group. Mattera will oversee the company's eV Products division, Wide Bandgap Materials Group, and Advanced...

Scottish optics firm nets $3.2 million.(optics industry report)
March 1, 2004... Leveraging its new strategy in the medical imaging market, Photonic Materials (Bellshill, Scotland) raised $6.9 million in a third round of funding from existing investors 3i, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Scottish Equity Partners. Photonic...

Zygo.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... Zygo (Middlefield, CT) reported net sales of $27.7 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2004. up $1.4 million, or 5%, from $26.3 million for the same period a year ago. Net sales in the semiconductor segment were $16.1 million, or 58% of...

Blue LED inventor wins in Japanese court.(imaging & detector industry report)
March 1, 2004... A Japanese court ordered Nichia (Tokyo) to pay a record 20 billion yen (US$189 million) to Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of the Blu-ray blue LED technology. It was the largest payment ever awarded in Japan for a lawsuit of this kind. ...

PerkinElmer (Wellesley, MA, and Fremont, CA) signed an exclusive agreement with General Electric (Fairfield, CT) to supply PerkinElmer's amorphous-silicon digital-flat-panel x-ray detector technology to GE Medical Systems (GEMS) and GE Aircraft Engines (GEAE).(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... PerkinElmer (Wellesley, MA, and Fremont, CA) signed an exclusive agreement with General Electric (Fairfield, CT) to supply PerkinElmer's amorphous-silicon digital-flat-panel x-ray detector technology to GE Medical Systems (GEMS) and GE Aircraft...

Osram (Munich, Germany) signed a cross-licensing agreement with Lite-On Technology (Taiwan).(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... Osram (Munich, Germany) signed a cross-licensing agreement with Life-On Technology (Taiwan) granting Lite-On a royalty-bearing license to manufacture and sell surface-mount, light-emitting diodes, and white LEDs with conversion technology, for...

The Aktelux division of Luxell Technologies (Toronto) signed a memorandum of understanding with B&A Avionics (St. Truiden, Belgium).(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... The Aktelux division of Luxell Technologies (Toronto) signed a memorandum of understanding with B&A Avionics (St. Truiden, Belgium) to explore new business opportunities through the design and development of a family of multifunction displays.

Newport enters spectroscopy market.(imaging & detector industry report)
March 1, 2004... Newport (Irvine, CA) has expanded into the spectroscopy and applied spectroscopy markets with the launch of a family of turnkey spectrometers, light sources, and fiber-based accessories. According to Ron Hartmayer, director of marketing for...

BAE wins $4.5 million Army contract.(imaging & detector industry report)
March 1, 2004... BAE Systems (Lexington, MA) has been awarded a three-year, $4.5 million contract by the Department of the Interior for the U. S. Army to improve producibility and lower the cost of IR focal-plane arrays. According to the company, the BAE IR...

e2v supplies sensors for European space mission.(imaging & detector industry report)
March 1, 2004... e2v Technologies (Chelmsford, England) supplied the CCD-based image sensors being used by the European Space Agency in the Rosetta mission to the Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which launched from its French Guiana spaceport in February. Rosetta...

Finisar to buy Honeywell's VCSEL business.(fiberoptics industry report)
March 1, 2004... Finisar (Sunnyvale, CA) and Honeywell International (Morristown, NI) have entered into a definitive agreement in which Finisar has agreed to acquire Honeywell's VCSEL Optical Products business, based in Richardson, Texas, for $75 million cash....

Nufern (East Granby, CT) has licensed a patent for amplification technology held by IMRA America (Arm Arbor, MI).(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... Nufern (East Granby, CT) has licensed a patent for amplification technology held by IMRA America (Arm Arbor, MI), enabling Nufern to offer a wider variety of optical-fiber subassemblies based on Nufern's specialty fibers.

OmniGuide Communications.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... OmniGuide Communications (Cambridge, MA), a developer of hollow-core cylindrical photonic-bandgap optical fibers, raised $15 million in a Series C round of financing.

Denselight.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... Denselight's (Singapore) superluminescent LEDs have successfully passed Telcordia's GR-468-CORE. "Reliability Assurance Requirements for Optoelectronics Devices Used in Telecommunications Equipment".

Picolight.(Also in the news)
March 1, 2004... Picolight (Boulder, CO) closed a $10 million round of funding that will help the company further develop and market its 1310-nm VCSELs.

Huawei invests more in FSO firm.(fiberoptics industry report)
March 1, 2004... Huawei Technologies (Shenzhen, China), China's leading telecommunications equipment provider, has invested US$2 million in LightPointe Communications (San Diego, CA) as part of a venture-capital fundraising effort that netted LightPointe $17...

CirTran branches out into fiberoptics.(fiberoptics industry report)
March 1, 2004... CirTran (Salt Lake City, UT) has purchased state-of-the-art equipment to manufacture fiberoptic cables. This equipment, valued at approximately $100,000, will be added to an additional manufacturing line in the company's Salt Lake City...

Pirelli wins two optical cable contracts.(fiberoptics industry report)
March 1, 2004... Pirelli (Milan, Italy) has been awarded two major contracts for the provision of overhead optical cable systems in Algeria. The contracts, worth a total of US$20 million, have been signed with the system integrator Telecommunications...

Machine vision reads tea leaves: mixed trends offer opportunities, and a court case clears the air.(inside imaging)
March 1, 2004... Signs of growth are promising for companies in imaging and machine vision. Critical industries that drive business--semiconductor, electronics, and automobile manufacturing, pharmaceutical production, and food and beverage processing--all look...

How can I become a manager of R&D at a company?(business forum)
March 1, 2004... Q: What do I need to do to be in charge of R&D in a company? I joined a couple of startups that failed during the bubble and am now back to academic research. A: It takes more than being a successful researcher or a recognized authority in...

Simulation is essential to successful design of modern semiconductors.(software & computing)
March 1, 2004... The application of lithography simulation has become mandatory for the research and development departments of semiconductor manufacturers and for many of their suppliers. Modern simulation software for lithography describes the light...

Flexible displays open new windows of opportunity: researchers are working to combine polymer and metal-foil substrates with printable TFT backplanes to move flexible displays closer to commercial reality.(Optoelectronic applications: novel displays)
March 1, 2004... For years, the "holy grail" of the display industry has been a thin, clear, flexible substrate with barrier properties equal to those of a sheet of glass. Flexible displays offer many potential benefits over other display technologies,...

Six-axis stage advances optical probing of wafers: planar manufacturing and test of optical components is still in its infancy but recent developments may enable routine wafer-level probing of optoelectronic devices.(Positioning Equipment)
March 1, 2004... Wafer-based probing of semiconductor chips during manufacture is an established technique used extensively across the semiconductor industry. The information it yields is of primary importance to efficient manufacturing, enabling higher yields,...

Optical imaging offers new biological insight: researchers cross academic boundaries to work around scattering of light in living tissue.(Biomedical Optical Imaging)
March 1, 2004... Drawing strongly on rapid technological developments fueled by massive investments in optical telecommunications, biomedical optical-imaging technology is achieving unprecedented spatial resolution (on the order of a few microns in the case of...

Government funds aid optical imaging.
March 1, 2004... There are changes afoot in the hallways and boardrooms of the National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, MD), and they have the optical-imaging research community applauding. The operative word is "funding," and the U.S. government is...

Portable laser-based imager offers efficient hydrocarbon detection: infrared wavelengths enable backscatter-absorption gas imaging in natural-gas and petroleum industry applications.(Tunable Solid-State Lasers)
March 1, 2004... The ability to visualize plumes of otherwise invisible gases is an attractive possibility for a variety of applications, including leak detection, hazard control, and emergency response. The human eye cannot see most gases because they absorb...

Surveillance satellites adapt to a changing world: while the newest generation of optical surveillance satellites provides superior resolution, it still has limitations. Plans are under way for improvements in resolution, speed of information, and the ability to track missiles.(Back to basics: optical surveillance satellites)
March 1, 2004... Spy satellites were America's hidden agenda at the dawn of the space age. Optical surveillance satellites profoundly affected the course of the Cold War, but they officially remained under deep cover until President Jimmy Carter announced their...

Thermal imaging on the rise.(Image Engineering)
March 1, 2004... Outdoors, at night, a naked adult glows like a 100-W bulb, but only if viewed in the correct spectrum. Forming images from the blackbody emission from objects in our environment uses particular ranges of the infrared. The wavelengths of the...

Single-chip ROADMs are produced the 'fabless' way.(Integrated Optics)
March 1, 2004... In the field of dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), the reconfigurable optical add/drop module (ROADM) is headed for wider use. At Clarendon Photonics, monolithic fabrication methods have led to the commercialization of a...

Frame grabber.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The new p31_SEC frame grabber is specifically designed for security and monitoring applications. It records data from analog color cameras via 16 separate analog inputs, each containing a separate A/D converter, to provide fast switching and...

Ultrafast amplifier.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The Libra is a versatile, one-box regenerative amplifier designed for ultrafast materials processing and scientific applications. It delivers 1 W of 800-nm output at repetation rates of 1 or 5 kHz. It can also pump multiple optical parametric...

X-ray inspection system.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The TIGER 2-D x-ray inspection system now includes an extended oblique-view inspection area for 24 x 24 in. boards. This allows operators to inspect up to 24 x 20 in. at full oblique angles. The system offers a view into the third dimension via...

Beam-deflection unit.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The FLS inlineScan is a beam-deflection unit. It quickly and precisely positions the laser beam on the work piece, avoiding the need to move the piece during the welding process. It can track up to several meters/s, allowing quasi-simultaneous...

Blue laser diode.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The IQ blue laser-diode module provides 4 mW at 473 [+ or -] 5 nm. It uses a precision current source and a PID temperature-control loop to provide stable wavelength and output. It is available with an elliptical or circularized beam in CW or...

Tunable spectrum analyzer.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The TLSA1000 tunable laser spectrum analyzer has measurement repeatability of better than 0.1 pm rms and absolute wavelength accuracy of better than 0.4 pm rms. An internal swept-laser source provides continuous scanning over 100 nm with...

Video measurement system.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The SmartScope Flash 500 video measurement system provides 20 x 18 x 8 in. xyz travel on a stable granite platform. It includes a 12x zoom lens that is automatically calibrated at every magnification change, LED lights, a coaxial surface...

Display-metrology software.(new products)
March 1, 2004... Version 8.0 of ProMetric display-metrology software has a new three-color calibration routine for luminance and illuminance measurements on RGB displays. The software allows the user to define complex, freeform measurement regions of interested...

Thin-film measurement.(new products)
March 1, 2004... ScalarGuage 1 uses broad-spectrum reflection interferometry to measure the thickness of transparent films from about 100 nm to 120 [micro]m, The noncontact system can operate in several wavelength ranges from 190 to 1020 nm. It includes an...

Test cubes.(new products)
March 1, 2004... Precision test cubes have angular tolerances [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Industrial sapphire.(new products)
March 1, 2004... Components and assemblies can be made from synthetic industrial sapphire according to customer specifications. Examples include sapphire windows with diameters of 1 to 150 mm; sapphire tubes, capillaries, and cylinders with diameters of 0.2 to...

Notch filters.(new products)
March 1, 2004... A series of single-and multinotch filters is for standard laser lines and OEM applications. The 532-nm filters, for example, have a notch width of 20 nm, 4% of the laser wavelength. Signal-notch filters are designed for Raman spectroscopy and...

Megapixel cameras.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The S1-1280F cameras have 1.3 million pixels, full-frame shutters, and USB 2.0 or Cameralink configurations. The cameras operate at up to 60 megapixels/s with 12-bit precision sampling. They sample up to 40 frames/s at 1.3 million pixels, 150...

Ti:sapphire optics.(new products)
March 1, 2004... Broadband optics are designed to allow the company's CW Ti:sapphire laser to be continuously tuned from 700 to 1000 nm, replacing three separate sets of cavity optics. Extended blue and extended red mirrors are also available to maximize power...

Beam-propagation analyzer.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The MS-200 beam-propagation analyzer has fast USB control for measurement time of less than two minutes, It measures [M.sup.2] and divergence by the ISO 11146 method. It uses stepper motors to translate beam-detecting mirrors along the beam...

Nd:YAG photodetectors.(new products)
March 1, 2004... New Nd:YAG photodetectors are optimized for high responsivity at 1064 nm. There are two four-element quad detectors and two single-element detectors. The n-on-p silicon devices operate in a fully depleted mode. Total-sensing-area diameters are...

Multichannel power supply.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The HV Rack is a multichannel, rack-mount power supply with preset "before" and "during" bias and bright digital display readouts. It has multiple output channels, local and remote controls, and universal AC input. It is configurable with up to...

Smart camera.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The Pictor M1248/E smart camera from Vision & Control (Suhl, Germany) can take up to 107 full images per second. It is based on a progressive-scan CCD sensor with 640 x 480 pixels. A DSP close to the sensor provides image data processing. The...

Laser-diode bars.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The ALBI series of standard laser bars offers wavelengths of 808, 915, 940, and 976 nm, with fill factors of 20%, 30%, 50%, and 90% for all direct diode and DPSS laser applications. The aluminum-free active-region (ALFA) bars measure 10 mm long...

Optical low-pass filters.(new products)
March 1, 2004... Optical low-pass filters for CMOS and CCD imaging are used in high-resolution, megapixel applications to prevent optical effects that degrade image quality. The filters block high-frequency spatial information to prevent the aliasing effects...

Digital communications analyzer.(new products)
March 1, 2004... The 86100C Infiniium digital communications analyzer with jitter (DCA-J) now has added a one-button jitter subcomponent analysis to Agilent's wide-bandwidth sampling oscilloscope to allow verification of digital designs and components. The...

Laser-processing software.(new products)
March 1, 2004... InScript laser-processing software is configured to fulfill process requirements for a wide range of laser applications. It is available separately or as part of a scan kit that facilitates the integration of scan components to custom specific...

Polarimeter.(new products)
March 1, 2004... AxoLite is a new, low-cost, Meuller Matrix Polarimeter. It uses a dual rotating retarder design, incorporating patent-pending AcoScan technology, to characterize the polarization properties of any optical sample. The device measures retardance,...