More Photonics News

	FREQUENCY COMBS: Frequency combs assist plasma-sterilization measurements 09/07/2012 Since standard Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers require long measurement times to yield molecular spectra with sufficient signal to noise ratio, researchers are instead using frequency combs for significantly fas...
	Photonics salary survey from SPIE shows high job satisfaction 09/06/2012 Bellingham, WA--The SPIE 2012 Optics and Photonics Global Salary Report found that more than 80% of the survey respondents enjoy their work and find it meaningful.
PNNL says LED lamps the most environmentally friendly form of lighting 09/05/2012 Richland, WA--The newest LED light bulbs have a slight environmental edge over compact fluorescent lamps.
Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy quantifies refined-oil mixtures 09/05/2012 Scientists at Tianjin University are now experimenting with terahertz time-domain spectroscopy at frequencies between 0.25 and 1.5 THz to determine the proportions in a mixture of gasoline and diesel.
	MEMS-based VCSEL reaches record 150 nm tuning range 09/05/2012 Last year, Laser Focus World reported on a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based 1310 nm widely tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) that enabled 760 kHz optical coherence tomography (OCT) scanning in co...
Aicon acquires 3D metrology company Breuckmann 09/04/2012 Braunschweig, Germany--Aicon 3D Systems has taken over 80% of Breuckmann GmbH (Meersburg, Germany), a 3D metrology company.
	IR difference spectroscopy reveals protein/pharmaceutical action in detail 09/04/2012 Bochum, Germany--Researchers at the Ruhr-Universität, Bochum (RUB) have developed a new IR spectroscopy technique to study the interaction between pharmaceuticals and their target proteins.
	CRISP nearly eliminates microscopy focus drift 09/04/2012 Applied Scientific Instrumentation (ASI) has developed a continuous reflective-interface sample-placement (CRISP) system that mostly eliminates focus drift in high-power microscopes by sensing minute changes between the objecti...
	Warm- to cool-white tunable LED package has high CRI, luminous efficacy 09/04/2012 In the quest for ever-better performance of white LEDs for illumination, researchers at Kookmin University and PSI Co. have created a series of multipackage LEDs that have luminous efficacies of around 100 lm/W and, at the same...
	Cantilever-based nanolithography technique could make cheaper biochips 09/04/2012 Raleigh, NC--A new cantilever-based nanolithography technique is less expensive than other approaches and can be used for numerous biomedical applications.
BEAM ANALYSIS: Onboard excimer laser metrology advances photolithography 09/01/2012 A real-time beam metrology module aboard a 193 nm excimer light source can monitor laser beam parameters such as beam divergence, near-field profiles, polarization, energy density, and beam pointing during wafer exposure, impro...
FIBER AMPLIFIERS: Higher-order modes expand optical fiber amplifier performance 09/01/2012 In the push to scale fiber lasers and amplifiers to higher and higher average powers and pulse energies, one of the routes to decreasing the nonlinearities that typically limit performance is to increase the effective area of t...
HIGH-SPEED IMAGING: Digital image correlation measures 3D surface deformation 09/01/2012 The combination of two high-speed synchronized CMOS cameras with analysis software produces accurate mechanical deformation data for use by product-design engineers.
PHOTONIC FRONTIERS: NANOLASER PROGRESS: Surface plasmons and nanolasers: A big push for very small lasers 09/01/2012 Hybrid semiconductor-metal lasers are making big progress on the nano frontier, scaling to smaller sizes and continuous-wave operation. But theorists warn that reducing size too much will increase losses, limiting how far laser...
PHOTONICS APPLIED: MATERIALS PROCESSING: Successful laser welding demands optimized laser joint design 09/01/2012 An optimized material joint design for laser welding is not only at the heart of a successful implementation, but it is the key to financial justification for the laser joining process.
LASER DIODES: Pumping of Ti:sapphire moves to the blue 09/01/2012 Direct laser diode pumping has now been brought to Kerr lens modelocked Ti:sapphire lasers, lowering the pump subsystem cost by a factor of ten and potentially leading to a new generation of Ti:sapphire lasers.
SOFTWARE & COMPUTING: Simulating active photonic materials becomes easy 09/01/2012 To reduce multimillion dollar investments in equipment, facilities, and labor costs, it is necessary to advance and invent new computational algorithms with enhanced flexibility and accuracy.
Working weekends 09/01/2012 In July 1962, Robert Hall and some colleagues at the GE R&D Center in Niskayuna, NY, succeeded in doing what researchers in other labs in the US, France, Russia and elsewhere were seeking: to create coherent light emission ...
Optogenetics-inspired, light-activated muscles could power small robots (SEE VIDEO) 08/31/2012 Cambridge, MA--MIT and University of Pennsylvania researchers have genetically engineered skeletal muscle that flexes in response to light.
LightPath reports largest quarterly net income in two fiscal years 08/31/2012 Orlando, FL--Optical components and assemblies maker LightPath Technologies (NASDAQ:LPTH) has reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year (FY) ended June 30, 2012.
Atomic force microscopy captures first images of DNA's double helix in water 08/31/2012 Researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, led by Bart Hoogenboom, Ph.D., have used atomic force microscopy (AFM) to capture the first images of DNA's double helix in water.
	Open-source platform advances biomedical-image processing 08/31/2012 Madrid, Spain and Cambridge, MA--Ignacio Arganda, a researcher from San Sebastián de los Reyes working for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and his team have implemented Fiji, a software-sharing platform that al...
Laser Services earns workforce training grant for employees 08/31/2012 Westford, MA--Laser Services, a precision laser job shop, has been awarded a $61,200 Workforce Training Fund grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for an employee training and professional development project.
	Commercial smartphone software to use hand vein patterns for authentication 08/31/2012 Tokyo, Japan--Smartphone software is growing more sophisticated in exploiting phone cameras' capabilities. The latest example of this is vein scanning for authentication: Universal Robot Co. and Softbank Mobile Corp. announced ...
Jenoptik expands production facility for high-power semiconductor lasers 08/30/2012 Jena, Germany--Jenoptik’s Lasers & Material Processing division opened its production facility for high-power semiconductor lasers in the Berlin-Adlershof Technology Park.