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  • Volume 37, Issue 9

    • Volume 37, Issue 9

    More content from Volume 37, Issue 9

    While falling several hundred attendees below last year's attendance figures, the 2001 annual meeting of the SPIE attracted a healthy crowd and overall participation typical of previous years.
    As with Semicon West in mid-July, attendance at the annual meeting of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) in San Diego, CA, (which spanned a week, ending ...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Researchers at Rice University obtained an absorption spectrum of room air with a 100-m-path-length multipass cell, a cooled, variable-duty-cycle pulsed-operation QC-DFB laser displaying an emission wavelength around 7.95 µm, and a zero-air background subtraction method.
    The recent expansion of quantum cascade lasers to the far-infrared wavelength range and short-pulsed operation further broadens the lasers' scope in trace-gas sensing applications...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Th 72003
    One of the most overlooked aspects of choosing a power or energy meter is defining the parameters of the application.
    Sept. 1, 2001
    FIGURE 1. Microscope-based white-light interferometer is equipped in this instance with a Mirau-type interferometric objective, typically used for magnifications of up to 50X.
    Different techniques use monochromatic, multiwavelength, and white-light sources combined with optics such as microscopes to examine surfaces to high precision.
    Sept. 1, 2001
    MEMS Optical secures funding; STAAR Surgical restructures operations; Zia Laser licenses suite of optics technologies from UNM...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Automotive sales buoy Rofin-Sinar through semiconductor blues; Infinite Photonics selects Orlando for GCSEL diode facility; AOI raises $10 million in second funding round...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Researcher Werner Gellermann (right) and ophthalmologist Paul Bernstein (center) use resonance Raman spectroscopy to measure the macular pigment levels in the eyes of research assistant Steve Wintch (left) at the University of Utah's Moran Eye Center. The spectroscopy device is expected to help in the early detection and prevention of age-related macular degeneration.
    Researchers from the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT) have developed an argon-laser-based diagnostic tool that could eventually help physicians slow, and possibly prevent...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Ceramic Nd:YAG laser reaches output of 72 W; Switch based on SOA achieves femtosecond switching; Buckyballs boost efficiency of thin-film organic solar cell ...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Researchers have presented a promising way to obtain inexpensive distributed feedback (DFB) thin-film based lasers that are tunable over the entire visible spectrum. Typically...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    SPIE's regional meeting on optoelectronics and imaging, OPTO-Southwest, will be held Sept. 17 to 18 in Tucson, AZ. Conference topics include astronomical optics, fiberoptic communicatio...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Tunable compliant MEMS Fabry-Perot filter contains three layers: a stationary dielectric mirror, a movable mirror suspended by a ring of compliant polymer, and an electrode layer. The third layer's four electrodes match up with four electrodes on the polymer, permitting precise tip-tilt adjustment of the movable mirror as well as pure translation.
    With optical networks moving toward higher and higher data rates and denser channel spacing, the probability of optical signals being lost or degraded grows greater. Engineers...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    (Photo courtesy of Boston University Photonics Center)
    Th 71908
    Silicon (Si) is transparent to light at infrared (IR) wavelengths longer than 1 µm. Because Si integrated circuits (ICs) are typically coated with opaque metal layers, techniques...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    FIGURE 1. In the optical coding method, based on wavelength and intensity multiplexing, the largest spheres represent polymer microbeads, in which smaller colored spheres (quantum dots) are embedded according to predetermined intensity ratios. Molecular probes are attached to the bead surface for biological binding and recognition, such as DNA hybridization. The colored (blue, green, red) spheres illustrate fluorescence intensity levels only. An optical measurement is possible by measuring the fluorescence spectra of single beads.
    Indiana University (Bloomington, IN) researchers have developed a multicolor optical-coding method that identifies tens of thousands of genes all at once by using tiny semiconductor...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    There was a clear trend this year at the 17th annual National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC) July 8 to 12 in Baltimore, MD, and its name was metro. In spite of grim ...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Th 72095
    Portable video microscope from Jenson Tools, Phoenix, AZ; UV laser system for microprocessing from LPKF Lasers and Electronics, Garbsen, Germany; Fiberoptic focusing optics from...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    (Photo courtesy of Coherent)
    A capital-spending lull in the semiconductor market this year has provided both opportunity and incentive for development of new technology and devices, including a 266-nm laser source specifically designed for semiconductor metrology introduced at Semicon West by Coherent.
    The total attendance of both exhibitors and visitors in July at Semicon West 2001 (San Francisco and San Jose, CA) was 60,028, with 1467 companies filling 375,917 sq. ft. of exhibit...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    (Photo courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology)
    Researchers Murray Barrett (left) and Michael Chapman adjust the optics of lasers used to cool and confine Bose-Einstein condensates in their lab.
    Physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) have demonstrated the first all-optical technique for producing Bose-Einstein condensates, a form of matter in ...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    FIGURE 1. In the first leg of the scanning positron-microscope schematic (prior to entering lens 1 and the second moderation stage), a continuous positron beam of 20 eV is produced and bunched into bunches of about 2 ns in width, each containing 20-ns segments of energy from the continuous beam. In the second leg, the positron pulse-width is further decreased to about 200 ps and focused to a spot size of less than 20 µm.
    Researchers at the Military University (Munich, Germany) have devised and tested a scanning positron microscope (SPM) that allows them to measure material defects with much higher...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    (Photo courtesy of NIST)
    Mechanical analogy of the optical clock, which uses the laser-comb system that links the mercury frequency, at about 1 quadrillion oscillations per second, to the countable microwave output of about 1 billion cycles per second.
    An all-optical atomic clock, recently demonstrated by researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Gaithersburg, MD), produces about 1 quadrillion...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Intended for general indoor or outdoor illumination, a luminaire both emits and shapes light. Many luminaires contain a diffuser to aid in light shaping. An ideal diffuser for...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Lucent sells fiberoptics business, releases disappointing quarter numbers; lcatel wins, acquires Kymata; JDS Uniphase loses $7.9 billion, cuts jobs...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Sometimes it's fun to speculate about what the future will bring, and for many of us involved with "high technology" such speculation inevitably leans toward how our lives may...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    FIGURE 1. Modern machine-vision systems for optical-fiber production applications can capture image data through a fiber-scope camera prior to processing with geometric pattern matching software and visual display.
    In today's high-volume world of fiberoptic cable production it is more important than ever to catch critical defects on fiber ends quickly and accurately. The slow, highly subjective...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    The acquisition of Coherent's medical division in April helped push ESC's stock to its highest point in 12 months. Coherent's stock price has not seen an increase, however, because of the overall high-tech stock slump.
    You know a business sector is full of too much uncertainty and too many frustrations when the market leader decides it has had enough. Long considered the leading pioneer in medical...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    Time was when a company's name described its business. You knew that the US Steel Corp. made steel (well, mainly) and the Pennsylvania Railroad ran trains (well, most of the time...
    Sept. 1, 2001
    1304qa Chang New
    I don't want to change jobs even though my stock options are under water. What can my company do to solve this problem?
    Sept. 1, 2001
    A listing of industry events covering October to December 2001.
    Sept. 1, 2001
    (Photo courtesy of US Department of Defense)
    Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, conducted a press briefing on the restructured missile-defense program and testing plan July 13 at the Pentagon.
    In July, the Bush administration unveiled its blueprint for developing defenses against enemy ballistic missiles, and laser technology may well play a major role in whatever system...
    Sept. 1, 2001