Now in its second year in San Francisco, the 2011 SPIE Photonics West conference and exhibition continues its impressive growth as it builds on past success to attract an increasing number of attendees and exhibitors.
San Francisco, CA--January 2011 brings Photonics West to San Francisco again where current photonics research, development, and applications will be on display. The interdisciplinary event underscores the extraordinarily wide-ranging nature of photonics technologies, with 3,976 papers scheduled across four technical symposia covering virtually every aspect of current global photonics activity. 2011 is billed as the biggest year yet for the Photonics West event, with more papers and expanded exhibition space. Organizer SPIE anticipates more than 1,200 exhibiting companies and about 18,000 attendees.
The technical program is expected to be about 7% larger than in 2010, with papers across the four symposia: Biomedical Optics (BiOS); Lasers and Applications (LASE); Optoelectronic Materials, Devices, and Applications (OPTO); and Micro and Nanofabrication (MOEMS-MEMS). The BiOS symposium is seeing the most growth, up 10% from last year with 1,775 papers. The OPTO symposium has 1,325 papers scheduled, the LASE symposium has 670, and the MOEM/MEMS symposium has 205.
New for 2011 is a “virtual symposium” in which research in green photonics for energy, sustainability, and conservation will be advanced through interdisciplinary virtual tracks connecting fields across the Photonics West technology areas.
BiOS Symposium
Representing 45% of the educational content at Photonics West, the annual Biomedical Optics Symposium (BiOS) is hot--and the single hottest event during BiOS takes place Saturday night from 7–9 pm. The appropriately named Hot Topics session beckons attendees to “hear the latest technical breakthroughs and directions from leading worldwide experts.” Each year, this series of presentations showcases some of the most interesting work underway--mostly in research, but also in the commercial realm.
This year’s Hot Topics will begin with a tribute to Michael Feld, the MIT professor who pioneered the application of spectroscopy to biomedicine. Not long after BiOS 2010, Feld lost his battle with cancer, but his presence is still with us, as will be demonstrated in a discussion of recent work that promises to overcome obstacles to the long-anticipated promise of noninvasive glucose monitoring and tomographic cell imaging.
The tribute will be followed by seven other presentations, including one by David Huang, a pioneer of optical coherence tomography, who will discuss new OCT developments impacting that technology’s original application: Ophthalmology. We’ll also get to hear about fluorescence lifetime techniques for intravascular diagnostics (presented by Laura Marcu of the University of California-Davis), using light to control the brain (by MIT’s Ed Boyden), and novel uses of femtosecond laser pulses (by Harvard’s Eric Mazur), and clinical multiphoton tomography (by Karsten Koenig, of Saarland University and JenLab GmbH--who won a 2010 Berthold Leibinger Award for this work). Paras Prasad, of the University of Buffalo, will discuss a multiplex platform for analyzing macromolecular dynamics in live cells (while on Sunday, Prasad will deliver a keynote exploring the impact of multiphoton microscopy and multimodal imaging on 21st century healthcare).
Also part of Hot Topics will be a presentation by Alexander Oraevsky of Fairway Medical Technologies on 3-D optoacoustic tomography. While photoacoustics technology is only just beginning to enter the commercial market, it is an area of great interest and dynamism: The BiOS “Photons Plus Ultrasound” conference attracted nearly 30% more papers and an almost 40% greater audience in 2010 over already-impressive increases in 2009. This year, Oraevsky chairs a Tuesday session on novel methods and technologies that will include a University of Michigan team discussing a photonic crystal-metallic structure able to produce an ultrasound signal at nearly the same frequency spectrum as the input laser pulse.
Another highlight in the BiOS program will be the unveiling, on Sunday, of an International Microcirculation Imaging Lab by a panel of researchers from key facilities in Europe and North America. “The vital role of the microcirculation in every organ of the body provides extraordinary opportunities for health impact, especially personalized healthcare,” says Martin Leahy, a conference chair. He explains that the ability of optical technologies to now provide “exquisite 3D images of the smallest blood vessels at clinically important depths” enables detection of changes before any clinical signs, predicting the onset of blindness and ulceration.
Sure to attract a crowd is the Sunday invited presentation by the Northwestern University team that recently proved able to detect early signs of lung cancer in humans by examining cells scraped from the patients’ cheeks.
Two other plenary sessions will take place on Tuesday, January 25: Frances S. Ligler, the Navy’s senior scientist for Biosensors and Biomaterials and current chair of the Bioengineering Section of the National Academy of Engineering, will present a Perspective on the Future of Optical Biosensors. And Harold G. Craighead, director of the Nanobiotechnology Center at Cornell University, will explore the use of nanostructures for biological research.
While the BiOS exhibits will be open only during the weekend (January 22 and 23), most BiOS exhibitors will also display in the Photonics West hall the rest of the week. Thank goodness, because we’re already beginning to hear about important new products that will be previewed--and there’s so much more to take in than one weekend will allow!
OPTO Symposium
The Optoelectronic Materials, Devices, and Applications Symposium, or OPTO, consists of 33 conferences in seven main program tracks: Optoelectronic Materials and Devices; Photonic Integration; Nanotechnologies in Photonics; Advanced Quantum and Optoelectronic Applications; Semiconductor Lasers and LEDs; Displays and Holography; and Optical Communications: Devices to Systems. Because this symposium highlights both novel optical materials research and breakthroughs in LED devices--indeed some of the hottest topics in photonics today--attendance should be high in those particular conference sessions.
The OPTO Plenary session on Tuesday, January 25th from 8 to 10 am begins with a presentation on flexible e-paper displays from LG Displays (Korea), followed by “Nanoscopy with Focused Light” from photonics pioneer Stefan W. Hell from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Germany). And Eli Yablonovitch from UC Berkeley (USA) concludes the Plenary with “Metal Optics: The New Frontier,” which discusses electromagnetism in metals as it relates to optical antennas and plasmonics.
Papers of note in OPTO related to LEDs include 7933-64, recent progress in developing “A light-emitting diode for entangled photons” from researchers at Toshiba Research Europe and the University of Cambridge in England--the first electrically driven entangled light source based on a layer of quantum dots embedded in an LED structure. And Dieter Lang from OSRAM (Germany), in paper 7954-1, explains “Energy efficient lighting for the human biological clock.” It seems that a photoreceptor in the human eye that controls biological functions is being mimicked in LED lighting as a means to explore how human biological activities can be optimized through lighting exposure.
Beyond LEDs, Dwayne R. J. Miller from the University of Hamburg (Germany) and the University of Toronto (Canada) presents keynote 7937-39 at 10:45 am on Tuesday called “Making the molecular movie: first frames,” which reveals how femtosecond electron diffraction enables us to watch atoms move and undergo transitions in real time thanks to 10 fs synchronization of electron probe and laser excitation pulses on the 100 fs time scale. “With the new information forthcoming from this level of acuity, we will be able to better control chemical and biological processes,” says Miller. “This work has already led to a new laser-based surgical method that avoids scar formation, based on atomic-level information on laser-driven phase transitions to remove material.” And L. Jay Guo from the University of Michigan (USA) describes “High-resolution plasmonic color filters with polarization selectivity and electrical conductivity” in paper 7956B-29 and how they could be used to simplify the structure of liquid-crystal displays (see Fig. 1).
Evening events in the OPTO Symposium from 7:30 to 9 pm Tuesday include both a Holography Technical Event and a workshop on “The Nature of Light: What are Photons?” to promote a better understanding of light-matter interactions; the OPTO interactive poster session is on Wednesday, January 26th from 6 to 7:30 pm.
Green Photonics Virtual Symposium
Energy, sustainability, and conservation are inherently interdisciplinary. In photonics, they connect under the broad topics of solid-state lighting and displays, laser-assisted manufacturing and micro/nano fabrication, communications, and renewable energy generation. As a gathering for researchers and industry working across all the relevant disciplines, SPIE Photonics West presents a new, synergistic forum in 2011 called the Green Photonics Virtual Symposium.
Authors were invited to submit papers to one of the regular conferences and request inclusion in the Green Photonics Virtual Symposium. SPIE’s Green Photonics leadership reviewed these requests and selected relevant papers to receive special recognition at Photonics West. “It is particularly timely to focus on these topics now, with signs of renewed vitality in the economy and the world’s growing needs for sustainable and less expensive energy sources, transportation, and communications systems,” said Green Photonics Virtual Symposium Chair Steve Eglash of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University.
The Green Photonics Virtual Symposium includes nearly 300 technical presentations and an industry panel taking a forward look at the path to commercialization of green technologies. The panel is open with free admission to exhibition-only attendees as well to full-conference registrants.
Relevant papers include 7933-3, “Hot carrier solar cells [HCSCs]: the ultimate photovoltaic conversion in practice,” in which Jean-Francois F. Guillemoles from the Institut de Recherche et Développement sur l'Energie Photovoltaïque presents HCSCs as an attractive solution to overtake the intrinsic efficiency limit for solar cells by converting the high energy range of the solar spectrum into electric power, exceeding the solar junction limit and allowing conversion efficiencies above 50% (see Fig. 2). And in paper 7916-31, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory presents a fusion approach using krypton fluoride (KrF) lasers and direct-drive targets. Simulations predict that a 1 MJ KrF laser can produce 200 MJ of fusion energy.
MOEMS-MEMS Symposium
This year’s Micro- and Nanofabricated Optical/Electromechanical Systems (MOEMS-MEMS) program encompasses how to make the devices as well as how to use them. The technical conferences total more than 200 papers, with approximately 50% of the talks from the U.S. and 50% international. The program’s two tracks--Micro/Nanofabrication, and Devices/Applications/Reliability--run largely concurrently throughout the week, so MOEMS-MEMS devotees will have their hands full. The papers range from fundamental fabrication technologies to widely diverging applications of MEMS/MOEMS.
“We are also very happy to be hosting several panel discussions this year, covering topics from microfluidics to applications and challenges for MEMS components in space,” says Thomas Suleski, the MOEMS-MEMS Symposium chair. “And we are particularly excited about the plenary session, to be held on Monday, January 24. The plenary covers a diverse range of topics from leading experts, including talks on technologies for ‘green’ photonics and microsystems by Amit Lal of Cornell University, emerging applications for MEMS technologies for sensing and medical imaging by Hiroshi Toshiyoshi of RCAST (University of Tokyo), and a talk by Robert Austin of Princeton University and the Hong Kong University of Technology on applying lessons learned from playing with toys to micro/nanofabrication to develop insights about the physics of living cells.”
The many sessions include notable topics such as Nanofabrication I: Photonic Nanostructures (from Conference 7927), in which a series of papers from Cambridge University, Harvard, and the University of Washington will be presented on state-of-the-art nanofabrication techniques, ranging from manufacturing of kilometer-scale rolls of elastic photonic crystals, to biologically inspired optical architectures for dynamic optomechanical systems.
In Microfluidic Devices and Systems for Pathogen Detection (from Conference 7929, and a joint session with Conference 7888), a series of papers covers the state of the art in microfluidics and optofluidics for particle detection and biological sensing and analysis. Display and Imaging I (from Conference 7930) includes sessions on technologies for dynamic, tunable imaging microsystems, as well as a series of papers on wafer-level fabrication and integration of micro-optics for compact imaging systems based on multiple apertures.
Recommended papers include “First results on electrostatic polymer actuators based on UV-replication” (7926-10), in which a team of German scientists describes the successful fabrication of polymer-based electrostatic actuators based on a nonconducting photoresistive polymer and completely produced at the wafer level using UV-replication processes.
In “Effects of radiation on MEMS” (7928-13, invited paper), researchers from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland) discuss the sensitivity of MEMS devices to radiation in space missions, noting that MEMS devices have been reported to fail at doses of as few krad, corresponding to less than a year in most orbits, and affecting mostly electrostatic MEMS devices.
“Noncontact, 3D fingerprint scanner using structured-light illumination” (7932-11) will cover an optical fingerprint scanner based on structured light and developed at FlashScan3D (Richardson, TX) and the University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY). The device captures 3D data for fingerprints quickly, accurately, and independently of an operator. FlashScan3D will present findings from research projects carried out for the U.S. Army and the Department of Homeland Security.
LASE Symposium
New types of lasers are, it seems, emerging on a rather regular basis thereby keeping the laser technology field in a constant state of flux. The LASE symposium provides an opportunity to catch up with some of the latest advances, and despite its name the symposium also covers LEDs. LASE includes 26 conferences in 5 program tracks.
“Semiconductor Lasers and LEDs” is chaired by Klaus P. Streubel of Osram GmbH (Germany) and includes papers covering semiconductor lasers (including VCSELs) as well materials, devices, and applications for solid-state lighting (conference 7954)--this latter session also gets picked up for the virtual symposium on green photonics, by the way. Other papers include a presentation of the latest performance data in single-emitter devices and laser bars at Jenoptik (Germany).
“Laser Source Engineering” is chaired by Gregory J. Quarles of BE Meyers and includes an invited paper during the “Solid State Lasers XX: Technology and Devices” conference in which researchers from the U.S. Naval Research Labs (Washington, DC) offer an overview of ceramic laser technology, which has reached the point that 100 kW output power has been demonstrated using ceramic Nd:YAG.
Needless to say there will also be many papers discussing advances in thin-disk and fiber lasers. Examples include, respectively, a paper from researchers at the University of Hamburg (Germany) who present an invited paper entitled, “Efficient Yb-doped laser materials for high-power applications,” and a discussion of thulium fiber laser lithotripsy in a invited presentation from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The program on laser applications includes a look at ultrafast optics in biomedical, scientific, and industrial applications (Conference 7925) as well as micro- and optoelectronic manufacturing (Conference 7920). Other topics include free-space communications (7923) and laser refrigeration of solids (7951).
On Wednesday, January 26 Nader Engheta from the University of Pennsylvania kicks off the Plenary Session with a presentation entitled "Of Light, Electrons, and Metamaterials," in which he speaks about tailoring metamaterials so they can manipulate and control microwave, terahertz, and other optical signals. He presents the concept of metamaterial-inspired optical nanocircuitry or "metraonics." Other Plenary speakers include Andreas Ostendorf from the Laser Zentrum Hanover (Germany) discussing the use of lasers in particle-based applications, and Paul Denney from the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, who speaks to the impact of advances in lasers on industrial applications.
Although not part of LASE, another laser-focused event at SPIE Photonics West is the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar 2011, to be held in conjunction with Photonics West on Monday, Jan. 24, at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco. Featuring a keynote presentation on high-power laser diodes from Prof. Dr. Reinhart Poprawe, managing director at Fraunhofer-Institut für Lasertechnik (Aachen, Germany), and a special Technology Forum on “Quantum cascade lasers for mid-IR applications: Pro vs. Con,” the full-day seminar looks at the business of photonics and is the only event that focuses solely on the laser marketplace and the applications that drive it forward. See www.marketplaceseminar.com.
For more information about Photonics West visit the Photonics West website.
You can also download the complete advance program for additional listings of papers and events
Posted by Laser Focus World and BioOptics World editorial staff