Concord, MA, October 16, 2002 -- John M. Guerra, the inventor of photon tunneling microscopy (PTM) and other near-field technology, has founded NANOPTEK Corp. to develop and commercialize nano- and near-field optical technology and instrumentation.
Guerra, who is President and CEO, is joined by Dr. Dmitri Vezenov, also an innovator in near-field and nano-optic technology. Dr. Vezenov is Vice President of Technology. Guerra and Vezenov first joined forces while at Polaroid Corporation, and continued their work in near-field optical data storage and microscopy as the "East Coast" near-field lab of Calimetrics, Inc., an R&D technology startup in California.
NANOPTEK's "out of the box" product family includes an all-new Digital PTM, the Trident PTM for rougher industrial surfaces, Photon Injector nano-optic substrate engineering samples, and NFNow! rigorous near-field optical modeling software. NANOPTEK also provides PTM and near-field modeling services, and consulting in near-field and nano-optics for such near-field applications as lithography, optical mastering and bio-assay.
Objects that are very small, on the order of the wavelength of light, scatter and diffract light at large angles from the viewing axis. In order to see and fully resolve the object, the lens must collect all of the scattered light information, so that it can interfere and form an image at the focal plane of the lens. This is how a microscope works, as Ernst Abbe discovered over a century ago.
The smaller an object is relative to the wavelength of light, the larger the angle of the light that is diffracted from it. One can make that angle smaller by using light with a shorter wavelength, or use a larger numerical aperture lens to collect the light. Ultimately, the angle of light diffracted from very small objects has an "imaginary sine", meaning that the light is bound to the object's surface and cannot propagate, or travel to, the lens.
The light exists as a bound "evanescent field", so-called because its intensity decays very quickly (exponentially) with distance from the object. Therefore, in order to see a very small object, you have to get very close to it (hence, "near-field").
NANOPTEK has developed technology that allows such proximity without scanning probes, and further utilizes the exponential decay of the field to obtain sub-nanometer vertical resolution- better than SEM.
NANOPTEK is an R&D technology company formed to develop and commercialize nano-optical and near-field optical technology and instrumentation. In addition, NANOPTEK enters into corporate contracts for near-field optical consulting, PTM services, rigorous vector diffraction modeling, and nano-optic design and fabrication. NANOPTEK also seeks corporate alliances and partnerships to develop applications of nano-optics in such diverse markets as biotechnology, flat panel displays, and solar energy.
Customers include corporations, as well as individual academics, researchers, and industrial engineers. Applications of our technology include bio-assay chips and readers, high density optical data storage media mastering and production, optical fabrication, thin film coatings, magnetic media inspection, semiconductor inspection, and many more. Our products and services are available worldwide.
For more information, visit www.nanoptech.com .
Laser Focus World