June 10, 2009--The 2009 PhAST/LFW Innovation Award winner was BioPhotonic Solutions (East Lansing, MI) for femtoFit--a miniature pulse shaper that uses proven multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) technology to compress ultrafast laser pulses at their target; however, femtoFit is roughly one-third the price, twice as fast during automated pulse characterization, and 1/10th the volume of first-generation MIIPS systems (see "Phast/LFW award puts "innovation" first").
By automatically measuring high-order dispersion and pre-compensating ultrafast pulses so they arrive transform-limited to the material being analyzed or processed (see "New tools compress and shape ultrafast pulses"), researchers and technologists can reduce ultrafast laser optimization times to two hours rather than two days, accelerating the migration of ultrafast technology from the laboratory into production environments. Video from the 2009 CLEO/IQEC PhotonXpo show floor describes femtoFit in detail:
The annual PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award honors the most timely, groundbreaking products in the field of photonics. It is sponsored by Laser Focus World and PhAST, the Photonics Applications, Systems & Technologies program that is an integral part of the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), held May 31-June 5 this year in Baltimore, MD. The award was presented on June 2 at the CLEO Plenary session.
For more information, go to www.biophotonicsolutions.com.
--Posted by Gail Overton, [email protected]; www.laserfocusworld.com.