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The European magazine for photonics professionals optics.org
REGIONS OF E XPERTISE
ISRAELI PHOTONICSINDUSTRY SHOWCASESITS MASSIVE DEPTH
November 2007 Issue 155
ACQUI SITION
Further industry consolidation as nLight buys Liekki
ASTRONOMY
NASA discusses the optical technology on Hubble’s successor
BACK CHAT
Strategies to tackle the increase in Asian competition
EDITORIALEditor Jacqueline HewettTel +44 (0)117 930 [email protected]
Reporter Marie FreebodyTel +44 (0)117 930 [email protected]
Reporter Tim HayesTel +44 (0)117 930 [email protected]
Senior production editor Alison GardinerTechnical illustrator Alison Tovey
EUROPE/ROW SALESBusiness development manager Adrian ChanceTel +44 (0)117 930 1193 [email protected]
Group advertisement manager Rob FisherTel +44 (0)117 930 1260robert.fi [email protected]
Advertisement manager Cadi JonesTel +44 (0) 117 930 1090 [email protected]
Senior sales executive Katrina DavisTel +44 (0) 117 930 1284 [email protected]
Sales executive Matthew GreenTel +44 (0) 117 930 1028 [email protected]
US SALESSales executive Tim MarshallIOP Publishing Inc, Suite 929, 150 South Independence Mall West, Philadelphia PA 19106, USATel +1 215 627 0880. Fax +1 215 627 [email protected]
ADVERTISING PRODUCTIONAdvertising production coordinator Ruth Stuart-TorrieTel +44 (0)117 930 [email protected]
Advertising production editor Mark Trimnell
CIRCULATION AND MARKETINGSubscription and circulation manager Mikael WigartTel +44 (0)117 930 [email protected]
ART DIRECTORAndrew Giaquinto
PUBLISHERClaire Bedrock Tel +44 (0)117 930 [email protected]
OPTICS & LASER EUROPEDirac House, Temple Back, Bristol BS1 6BE, UK Tel +44 (0)117 929 7481 Editorial fax +44 (0)117 925 1942 Advertising fax +44 (0)117 930 1178 optics.org/oleISSN 0966-9809 CODEN OL EEEV
SUBSCRIPTIONSComplimentary copies are sent to qualifying individuals. For readers outside registration requirements: £116/7168 ($208 US and Canada) per year. Single issue £11/715 ($19 US, Canada and Mexico). Contact IOPP Magazines, WDIS Ltd, Units 12 & 13, Cranleigh Gardens Industrial Estate, Southall, Middlesex UB1 2DB, UK.Tel +44 (0)20 8606 7518. Fax +44 (0)20 8606 7303
© 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd. The contents of OLE do not represent the views or policies of the Institute of Physics, its council or its offi cers unless so identifi ed. Printed by Warners (Midlands) plc, The Maltings, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH, UK.
For the latest news about optics and photonics, don’t forget to visit optics.org.
Cover (Weizmann) Israel’s photonics industry is thriving p23
NEWS5 Business nLight to acquire Liekki• Sony to launch OLED
TV• People
10 Editorial Further consolidation
TECHNOLOGY11 Applications CO2 lasers set sights on glaucoma• Two photons see blood in new light• Gigapixel camera searches the sky
15 R&D Mixed CO2 creates terahertz source• Intracavity microlens tunes VCSEL
16 Patents MetaStable Instruments receives laser cleaning patent• Nichia expands its patent cross licence with Cree
FEATURE S17 Lightweight optics star in Hubble’s successor Astronomers could soon be glimpsing farther back in time thanks to pioneering optics that are being built for the James Webb Space Telescope. Marie Freebody asks NASA’s John Decker and Lee Feinberg about the mirror and wavefront sensing technology.
20 Beam shaping expands processing potential Lens array beam shaping is extending the scope of the laser materials processing market. Vitalij Lissotschenko and Paul Harten of LIMO explain why direct diode applications such as welding and cutting are in line to benefi t.
23 Israeli ingenuity powers photonics sector Israel’s government attributes the country’s success in photonics to a combination of strong academia carrying out world-class research, a well-developed optoelectronics industry and an active venture-capital community. Tim Hayes went to see for himself.
27 Telecentric lenses aid machine vision Finding the right set of lenses for your machine vision system can be a daunting task. Wiebke Marzahn of Sill Optics addresses some common concerns by breaking the puzzle down into a number of key questions to ask yourself before starting your search.
PRODUCTS31 Light test software• Fibre-coupled modules• EMCCD cameras
REGUL ARS38 Back chat
I s sue 155 November 2007 Content s
7800 m exhibition centre opens in Stuttgart p6
Blood cell images have micrometre resolution p12
Beam shaping opens up processing market p20
Our guide looks at lenses for machine vision p27
E Laser Focus World, Vision Systems Design, Spectroscopy, Solid State Technology, WDM Solutions 8 x 103/4
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5OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
NEWS
nLight to acquire Liekki
BUSINE S S 5 E DITORIAL 10
ACQU I SIT ION IN BRIEF
AC Q U I S I T I O N
Trumpf has completed its acquisition of Advanced Fabricating Machinery. The deal strengthens Trumpf’s position in fabrication and laser technology in North America, according to the company. Philips will acquire Lighting
Technologies International (LTI), a US manufacturer of high-power xenon lamps for the entertainment industry. LTI will become part of Philips’ Special Lighting Applications business group. Alpine Research Optics (ARO), a
US supplier of high-performance coated optics, has been acquired by Saint-Gobain Crystals. The deal will allow ARO to offer fi nished coated components based on Saint-Gobain’s range of crystalline materials.
EX PA N S I O N
Amplitude Laser is a new US subsidiary formed by the French companies Amplitude Systemes and Amplitude Technologies. Headquartered in Boston and with an offi ce in San Diego, it will provide sales and service support to the North American territory. Quantel, the French developer
of diode and fi bre lasers, has established a German offi ce headed by Olivier Dubreuil. He will handle German and Austrian customers for the fi rm’s scientifi c and industrial product line.
FU N D I N G
Light Blue Optics, a UK developer of holographic laser projection technology, has closed a $26 m (718.3 m) funding round allowing accelerated development and commercialization of its miniature projection systems. Gravitational wave research at
the University of Glasgow, UK, has been boosted by a 5-year grant of £7.1 m (710.2 m) from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. The award covers research that will upgrade LIGO’s (laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory) detectors.
nLight of the US has announced plans to acquire Liekki, the Finn-ish fibre manufacturer. The acquisition will enable nLight to expand its product portfolio to supply a complete chain from semiconductor lasers and fi bres to optical modules.
“Diodes and fibres are com-plementary technologies that are critical for the future of our industry,” Scott Keeney, president and CEO of nLight, told OLE. “We are currently working in close partnership with cus tomers to develop new OEM products and we will be announcing new prod-ucts next year.”
Liekki sees the acquisition as a growth opportunity. “It was the right time. We had taken the company as far as we could without a substantial partner,” explained William Willson, man-aging director of Liekki. “We saw this acquisition as a way that we could grow faster.”
Willson adds that Liekki will continue to support its current product strategy of selling active fi bres globally, as well as optical engines and simulation software. “Laser diodes and active fi bres are two key products used in fi bre-laser modules and fibre-ampli-fi er modules, so we will explore how to develop each product area to create unique benefi ts to cus tomers,” he said.
Although Keeney and Willson
did not disclose how much the acquisition was worth, they con-fi rm that both the US and Finland sites will be maintained. Willson believes that Liekki’s fundamen-tal business will remain rela-tively unchanged and that no job losses are expected.
“The Liekki brand will remain, as will the Liekki sites,” said Willson. “We expect investment within Finland with its fi bre facil-ity becoming nLight’s fi bre cen-tre of excellence.”
According to nLight, the semi-conductor and fibre laser mar-ket is growing rapidly (see OLEOctober, p26) and nLight is the fastest-growing company within the semiconductor laser market. “This is a very important acqui-sition that integrates core tech-nology for the rapidly growing markets,” said Keeney. “Combin-ing the nLight and Liekki product portfolios will bring compelling solutions to our industry.”
CVI Melles Griot has bought Coherent Imaging Optics (CIOL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coherent that supplies infrared optical components for advanced thermal imaging and other electro-optic systems. Similar to CVI’s acquisition of Melles Griot in July, this latest acquisition was an all-cash deal and was com-pleted on 28 September.
The acquisition gives CVI Melles Griot access to unique coating and fabrication technologies such as magneto-rheological fi nishing, diamond turning, cleanable silver coatings and environmentally rugged sputtered coatings. The company will also benefit from having a large manufacturing facility in Europe dedicated to pro-ducing products for wavelengths above 3 µm.
“Where CVI Melles Griot is predominantly active in the wavelength region below 3 µm, CIOL’s business in Leicester, UK, is almost exclusively active above 3 µm,” Stuart Schoen-mann, CEO of CVI Melles Griot, told OLE.
According to Schoenmann, the acquisition comes at the right time given that the market segments served by the Leicester business, predominantly defence, safety and security, are enjoying signifi cant and sustained growth across a variety of applications.
“The anticipation is that growth in the business will accel-erate because CIOL’s business in Leicester is in the right market segments at the right time,” com-mented Schoenmann.
This acquisition is the latest in the fi rm’s strategy of expand-ing its product lines, increas-ing capabilities and addressing
growing market opportunities. “In recent years we have seen a substantial consolidation across our customer base, echoed by consolidation among a number of our competitors,” explained Schoenmann. “It is critical to the future of the business and the quality of service that we can offer our customers to stay at the leading edge of technology.”
CIOL will benefi t from being a significant manufacturing site within CVI Melles Griot’s world-wide manufacturing organiza-tion. Robin Henderson, managing director of CIOL, will continue to head the new CVI Melles Griot division, and will report directly to Schoenmann. “We are excited to be joining the CVI Melles Griot family,” he said. “We will be focus-ing on developing the site as CVI Melles Griot’s centre of excellence for infrared imaging optics fabri-cation and coatings.”
ACQU I SIT ION
CVI Melles Griotcontinues to grow
nLight says that the semiconductor laser market is growing rapidly.
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6 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
NEWS
BUSINESS
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Sony will launch an ultra-thin organic light-emitting diode (OLED) television based on its Organic Panel technology in December. According to the com-pany, its XEL-1 is the world’s fi rst OLED television and will provide customers with unparalleled thinness combined with superb image quality.
The 11-inch screen measures just 3 mm at its thinnest point and is supported by an alumin-ium side arm. It will initially go on sale in Japan at a retail price of 200 000 Yen (71200).
The XEL-1 incorporates a microcavity structure to allow for effi cient light emission, and an embedded colour fi lter. These
features are said to enable high peak brightness and colour reproduction, a high contrast of 1,000,000:1 and rapid response time. Given that OLEDs do not require a separate backlight source, the power consumption of the display is as low as 45 W.
Sony’s Organic Panel consists of an organic material layer measuring several hundred nanometres thick, sandwiched between two thin glass panels. Sony will develop its OLED televi-sion business alongside its exist-ing LCD technology.
OLE D S
Sony to launch OLED TV
II-VI is to acquire a majority interest in HighYAG, a Ger-man supplier of laser process-ing heads, fi bre-optic cables and other beam delivery systems for materials processing applica-tions. The company will pur-chase 74.9% of HighYAG, with the remainder held by HighYAG CEO Bjoern Wedel.
HighYAG, which was founded in 1995 and is based near Berlin,
produces automated equipment to deliver high-power 1 µm laser light for cutting, drilling and welding. Based in Pennsylvania, US, II-VI manufactures crystal-line compounds for IR laser optics and electronics applications. It says that the HighYAG deal will complement the products in its existing infrared and near-infra-red optics business groups.
“We will be able to provide a wider range of optical compo-nents for industrial laser appli-cations,” said Francis Kramer,
CEO of II-VI. “The acquisition of HighYAG is an important part of our growth strategy.” The expanded product line will enable II-VI to supply components into the fi bre laser market.
“HighYAG will gain access to new markets and increased fi nancial strength,” commented Wedel, who will remain with the company as managing director.
HighYAG had revenues of $6.2 m during 2006. The deal is expected to close in II-VI’s third quarter of fi scal 2008.
ACQU I SIT ION
II-VI buys majority share of HighYAG
The XEL-1 is 3 mm at its thinnest point.
Son
y
Delegates attending VISION this month will be some of the fi rst to see the 7800 m New Trade Fair Centre in Stuttgart, Germany. “We are convinced that the New Trade Fair Centre is Europe’s most modern venue,” Silvia Blumenstein, Messe Stuttgart’s director of international business development, told OLE.
One of the most important aspects is the convenience of the location. “The New Trade Fair is only 350 m from the airport terminal,” commented Blumenstein. “You can walk out of the terminal and be in the Trade Fair in just 5 minutes.”
Inside the centre, visitors will fi nd nine exhibition halls and an international congress centre.
If you are not in Stuttgart in November, Messe Stuttgart is launching a new event called LASYS, which will be held on 4–6 March 2008. “LASYS will be held every two years and will focus on laser-based manufacturing,” said Blumenstein.
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8 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
BUSINESS
NEWS
PEOPLE
L ASE R SOURC E SShawn Redmond has joined Aculight as senior scientist specializing in high-power laser technology. Dan Hu has joined as senior scientist/project manager to support the company’s line of high-power fi bre laser modules.
PHOTOVOLTAIC SDan Williams has been named vice-president of product and business development by Konarka. He will direct growth and application development of the company’s Power Plastic material, ready for market commercialization, and will be based at the company’s US headquarters.
IMAGINGDino DiCamillo has joined Advanced Research Technologies as vice-president of global sales and
marketing for preclinical imaging. His primary role will be to grow the market share for preclinical products through direct distribution channels of the company’s Optix optical imaging system in North America and Europe.
L ASE R SOURC E SLarry Roberts has been appointed director of engineering by J P Sercel Associates. He was previously engineering manager/principal engineer at Laurier.
COMMUNICATION SKeith Lambert has been named senior vice-president of optical communications operations at JDSU. He will be addressing lean manufacturing, cost leadership and operational excellence for the group. He will report directly to David Gudmundson.
PAT TE RN GE NE R ATORSSwedish fi rm Micronic Laser Systems has elected Göran Malm as chairman of the board until the next annual general meeting. He succeeds Lars Nyberg, who becomes president and chief executive offi cer of TeliaSonera.
COMMUNICATION SThree new senior sales executives have joined Polatis. Stuart Santoro is director of telco sales for North America. Sean Gordon joins as director of video/broadcast sales worldwide and Philip Benguhe has been appointed as director of sales for the defence and federal sector.
L ASE R SOURC E SRobert Deuster retired as chairman and CEO of Newport in October. Robert Phillippy, already president and chief operating
offi cer at the laser and photonics systems supplier, has assumed the role of CEO and will serve on the board of directors. Kenneth Potashner has been named non-executive chairman.
OP TICAL F IBRE SIncom has promoted Jeffrey Solari to manager of product development, marketing and sales. He will support the company’s development of prototypes for new applications as part of its expansion plans.
L ASE R SOURC E SAlan Lowe has been appointed to lead JDSU’s commercial lasers business, replacing Philip Meredith who will retire. Lowe will focus his efforts on margin expansion and manufacturing initiatives as the industry makes the transition from gas to solid-state laser platforms.
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10 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
NEWS
EDITORIAL
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Further consolidationWhen I sat down to write last month’s editorial column FLIR had just acquired Cedip Infrared Systems so consolidation was on my mind. Since then, there has been further consolidation, notably nLight acquiring Liekki and CVI Melles Griot continuing its spending spree by acquiring Coherent Imaging Optics.
The need for consolidation in the industry is always a talking point. Our industry is ready for consolidation and it is certainly necessary. If you ask any of the parties involved in recent acquisitions, the common response is that the time was right to move on. Take the nLight–Liekki acquisition for example where William Willson, managing director of Liekki, summed the situation up. “We had taken the company as far as we could without a substantial partner,” he told OLE. “We saw this acquisition as a way we could grow faster.” On this evidence and looking at the make up of the optics and photonics industry, this latest round of acquisitions won’t be the last.
Another issue that European fi rms are facing is increasing competition from Asia, especially China. In this month’s back chat feature on p38, OLE spoke to Andreas Nitze, CEO of Berliner Glas, about his company’s experiences. For me, it was Nitze’s advice to companies trying to cope with Asian competition that was a real eye opener.
“Make sure as a European or US company that you are better in terms of reliability, fl exibility, speed and/or competence. If not, leave the market,” he said. “You must move the battlefi eld away from pricing to factors such as reliability. You will never win on pricing. It is as simple as that.”
We’ve also been monitoring the progress of diode lasers into the materials processing market. This month, German fi rm LIMO steps up to explain why lens array beam shaping is extending the use of high-power diode lasers in the materials processing market.
“New applications are becoming feasible and the business cases for existing applications are improving thanks to lens array beam shaping,” Paul Harten of LIMO told OLE. “Applying this technology to industrial diode laser systems with excellent beam quality combined with falling dollar-per-watt prices creates new opportunities.”
Enjoy the issue.
Jacqueline Hewett, editorE-mail [email protected]
“This quarter’s regional focus article takes a look at the optics industry in Israel.”Jacqueline Hewett
11OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
TECHNOLOGY
CO2 lasers set sights on glaucoma
APPLICATIONS 11 R&D 14 PATE NTS 16
VI SION
A carbon-dioxide (CO2) laser-based system for treating glau-coma is both safer for the patient and easier to use compared with existing surgical meth ods, according to its developers IOPt-ima of Israel. Once the company has secured FDA approval, it is certain that its OTS134 laser will be widely adopted by oph-thalmic surgeons.
Glaucoma is a progressive disease that is associated with elevated intraocular pressure and visual fi eld loss. If it is left untreated, the pressure build-up can lead to blindness.
“The most common surgical glaucoma procedure involves penetrating the eye-ball, with inevitable potential side effects and complications,” Joshua Degani, CEO of IOPtima, told OLE.“Our method is non- penetrating, which is an easier alternative for
surgeons and requires very short training time.”
IOPtima’s target markets include hospitals, private oph-thalmic surgical centres and outpatient facilities. The com-
pany believes that the short learning curve and safety of the procedure will encourage the ophthalmic community to adopt the system. What’s more, the company says that its system can be easily installed, stored and removed from any surgical ophthalmic microscope.
“We are developing a surgi-cal procedure that will be safe, have long-term effi cacy, with no side effects and minimal compli-cations, and will be easy to per-form. There is no other procedure that meets these requirements,” explained Degani. “The system is very simple to use and since the CO2 laser is the most veteran of all medical lasers, we do not expect any diffi culties in running this laser in hospitals.”
The OTS134 system con-sists of a CO2 laser, scanner and micromanipulator. The laser
beam is applied to the dry scle-ral tissue of the eye and results in localized ablation until a thin wall is achieved. Once enough fl uid can percolate through the thin wall, the tissue ablation automatically ceases.
IOPtima is not releasing details of the laser or its cost until the development phase is complete. The company has developed two prototypes, performed 23 human clinical trials and completed the first stage of its clinical study successfully. A larger worldwide study will take place this year and the company is hoping to launch the OTS134 in the US by the middle of 2008.
The fi rm has fi led for two broad patent applications covering dif-ferent aspects of the technology and method, and plans to begin marketing in Europe with a fee-per-procedure payment model.
A US group has found that fi ring a low-power femtosecond laser at bacterial viruses in solution can dramatically reduce the number of infectious viruses, in some cases by a factor of 1000. “I had to repeat the experiment several times to convince myself that the laser worked this well,” Shaw-Wei D Tsen of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, US, told OLE (J Phys: Condens. Matter 19 322102).
The team believes that the pulses cause the viruses to vibrate by stimulating low-frequency Raman active vibrational modes. Under the right excitation, the vibration is suffi cient enough to render the viruses inactive. “The rapid laser pulses allow the solu-tion surrounding the virus to cool off, reducing heat damage to the normal blood components,” commented Tsen.
The group used a diode-pumped continuous-wave mode-locked Ti-sapphire laser to fire femtosecond pulses at samples of M13 bacteriophage. Samples were typically irradiated for 10 hours with 80 fs pulses, each hav-ing an average power of 40 mW.
This method leaves the sen-sitive cells around the viruses unharmed and is much more selective than ultraviolet irra-diation methods, which disinfect micro-organisms but usually cause mutation. Lasers pass through any water surrounding the viruses without absorption, unlike microwaves or ultra-sonic vibrations. Since the dam-age to the viruses is essentially mechanical, caused by structural vibrations rather than chemical attack, the technique should not trigger an immune response or evoke any drug resistance.
Femtosecond laser renders viruses inactive
BIOPHOTONIC S
The company has already performed a number of pre-clinical laser trials.
fs pulses cause the viruses to vibrate.
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12 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
TECHNOLOGY
APPLICATIONS
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ME DICAL IMAGING
Two photons see blood in new lightA US team has imaged haemo-globin in red blood cells with micrometer resolution with-out injecting external contrast agents or dyes into the blood. The method might also differentiate between oxy- and deoxy-haemo-globin, which would be a crucial step in cancer studies (Optics Let-ters 32 2641).
The technique employs two-colour two-photon absorption, which offers the same perform-ance and resolution as two-pho-ton fluorescence, but does not require dyes to be injected into the blood. Two collinear synchro-nized ultrashort laser pulse trains at different wavelengths function as pump and probe and are cou-pled into a laser scanning micro-
scope for imaging purposes.“With different pump-probe
wavelength combinations we could potentially image oxygen-ation on the same micrometer level, exploiting oxygen’s effect on the molecule’s excited-state dynamics,” Dan Fu of Princ-eton University told OLE. “This is important because we could watch blood vessel growth non-invasively and monitor tissue oxygenation state during the development of a tumour.”
One limiting factor in the team’s early images was a reduc-tion in spatial intensity caused by scattering of the probe photons at 650 nm. The signal-to-noise ratio was improved by increasing the probe wavelength to 775 nm
and pumping at 650 nm, which enabled observations of complex 3D blood vessel structures.
The technique’s depth pen-etration is limited to approxi-
mately 70 µm, which is also due to high scattering. However, the team believes that this could be improved with longer pump and probe wavelengths, higher opti-cal powers and a microscope objective lens with a higher numerical aperture.
“Our laser sources are stand-ard off-the-shelf products using an ultrafast laser oscillator and optical parametric oscillator,” Fu explained. “The system set-up is a little more complex than stand-ard two-photon f luorescence because we are using two lasers, but in principle we could use one broadband laser and derive the two colour beams that we need. We’ve already done initial stud-ies on that.”
By Belle Dumé Scientists have used near-infra-red fl uorescence microscopy to image carbon nanotubes inside a living organism for the first time. Bruce Weisman and col-leagues at Rice University, US, used the imaging technique to detect carbon nanotubes inside fruit-fl y larvae. The team hopes that its technique may eventu-ally be used to detect tumours in human cancer patients (Nano Letters 7 2650).
“Since the discovery that nano-tubes fl uoresce in the infrared, we have hoped that this fl uorescence could be used as an imaging tool
in whole organisms,” Kathleen Beckingham told nanotechweb.org. “Our demonstration that nanotubes can be imaged in vivo in Drosophila by their infrared fl uorescence is the fi rst evidence
that this is a realizable goal.”The researchers achieved their
result by introducing nanotubes into fruit-fly larvae by feeding them on food laced with the nano-materials. Next, they imaged the nanotubes in the living organ-isms using a camera inside a custom-designed infrared micro-scope and compared the images with a control group of fl ies that had not been fed nanotubes.
“The most important fi nding is that the ability of the nano-tubes to emit near-infrared light at specifi c wavelengths persisted within the interior environment of the living organism,” explained Beckingham. “Although only about one in 100 million nano-tubes passed through the gut
wall and entered the fl ies’ organs, we were able to detect these miniscule quantities of nano-tubes in other tissues. Indeed, single nanotubes were detected and characterized in brain tissue isolated from the larvae.”
The highest concentration of nanotubes was found in the dor-sal vessel, which is analogous to a main blood vessel in a mam-mal. “The fact that nanotubes can be imaged in this way in one living multicellular organism is a very strong predictor that similar imaging will be possible in humans or other animal spe-cies,” commented Beckingham.
Belle Dumé is contributing editor at nanotechweb.org.
Flies make history in nanotube fi rst
NANOTEC HNOLOGY
Pump-probe spectroscopy is helping a US team to image haemoglobin in red blood cells with micrometer resolution.
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The image shows near-infrared emission from nanotubes in the gut of a living Drosophila larva. The emission is intensity-cooled in false colour.
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14 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
TECHNOLOGY
APPLICATIONS
AS TRONOM Y
Gigapixel camera searches the sky
A colossal 1.4 Gpixel digital cam-era has just been deployed on the Pan-STARRS-1 (PS1) telescope in Maui, Hawaii. The PS1 is the fi rst of four identical telescopes that make up a $100 m project designed to search the sky for potentially hazardous asteroids.
“The big revolution of PS1 is to tile focal planes with billions of pixels,” Nick Kaiser, a researcher from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, told OLE. “Using an 8 ×8 array of independently addressable little cells allows the system to be read out at an incredible speed.”
The camera uses a 64 ×64 CCD array covering a total area of 40 cm2 and produces an image
that is 38 000 ×38 000 pixels. Each CCD array contains approxi-mately 600 ×600 pixels.
The CCD focal plane employs orthogonal transfer array CCDs (OTCCDs) made up of 8 × 8arrays on a single 5 cm2 silicon chip. The OTCCDs, developed
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Labor-atory, are able to read out large amounts of data quickly.
Splitting the image area has additional benefi ts. Not only does it reduce the dazzling effect that a very bright star can have on the
image, but any defects in the sen-sor chips only affect a small part of the image area. Each camera will include an identical set of 5 or 6 optical fi lters that can be positioned remotely in front of the focal plane to image most of the visible spectrum from 0.4 to 0.8 µm. The team has also devel-oped an ultrafast 480-channel control system to analyse the 1000 images that can be captured per night by each telescope.
“The main goal is to detect 90% or more of all potentially hazardous asteroids bigger than 300 m in diameter, determine their orbits and fi nd out if they are going to collide with us in the foreseeable future,” said Kaiser.
Researchers from Singapore, China and Japan have unveiled what they believe to be the fi rst high-power, self-mode-locked ceramic laser. The team says that its simple approach can be applied to other high-power lasers, par-ticularly those emitting at wave-lengths where mode-locking elements such as semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SES-AMs) are not available (Optics Letters 32 2741)
“Our self-mode-locked ceramic laser is simple and compact,” researcher Guoqiang Xie from Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity in Singapore told OLE.“Our laser cavity uses just three mirrors and a ceramic rod. Com-pared to Kerr-lens mode- locking, the self-mode-locking is not as sensitive to cavity alignment and the mode-locking region is relatively long.”
Self-mode-locking means that no additional active or passive mode-locking elements (such as SESAMs) are used in the laser cav-ity. The mode-locking is purely driven by optical and thermal effects in the laser material itself.
Xie says that his team’s Yb:Y2O3
ceramic laser has an average
output power of 2.7 W and emits 1.1 ps pulses at a repetition rate of 126 MHz. “The pulse energy reaches 21 nJ and a peak power of 19 kW,” he said. “The pulses will be useful for frequency doubling, frequency mixing and other nonlinear processes, or as seed-ing pulses for further amplifying large-scale ceramics.”
The fi rst step in the process is to pump the ceramic material with a 30 W fi bre-coupled laser diode bar emitting at 937 nm. Xie explains that the diffraction loss induced by thermal lens aber-ration, in combination with the Kerr-lens self-focusing effect in the gain medium, results in the self-mode-locking.
“It was important to under-stand the thermal lens and its
aberration value as well as hav-ing a suitable laser mode size when we designed the laser cavity,” commented Xie. “We estimate the thermal lens aber-ration value and the diffraction loss induced by the aberration to obtain the nonlinear loss modulation required for mode- locking. In our laser, a laser mode radius of approximately 120 µm in the ceramic is used, which generates a nonlinear loss modulation of 2 ×10–4.”
The team is now investigating nonlinear processes such as mul-tiple pulsing in the ceramic and hopes to extend the self-mode-locking technique to other high-power lasers. Xie added that there are no plans to commercialize the cavity design at the moment.
Self-mode-locked ceramic laser has debut
MATE RIAL S
Left: the camera is one quarter of a $100 m project designed to search the sky for potentially hazardous asteroids. Right: the 1.4 Gpixel Pan-STARRS camera was assembled at Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US.
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Researchers in the US have gener-ated coherent terahertz pulses by frequency-mixing two carbon-dioxide (CO2) laser beams in a nonlinear crystal. The pulses were generated at 328.2 µm with an average output power of 260 µW and a repetition rate of 60 kHz. The team’s goal is to achieve aver-age terahertz output powers of a few milliwatts (Applied Physics Let-ters 91 091108).
“This is the fi rst report of high-power terahertz generation based on frequency-mixing two CO2 lasers in a bulk nonlinear crystal,” Yujie Ding, a researcher at Lehigh University, told OLE.“Our aim was to improve the average output powers of tera-
hertz sources at relatively low frequencies where other approaches are either unreach-able or ineffi cient.”
The researchers are planning to use the terahertz output to measure the absorption of gases at very low pressures and image remote objects.
CO2 lasers may not be the obvi-ous fi rst choice for practical tera-hertz generation but Ding believes that they have many advantages. “These lasers are robust, highly compact and rugged,” he com-mented. “The conversion effi-ciency for converting each CO2
laser photon into a terahertz photon is one order of magnitude higher than using distri buted feedback lasers. In addition, quantum cascade lasers cannot produce such a low frequency.”
The terahertz pulses were gener-
ated by frequency- mixing two CO2
lasers, one emitting at 10.59 µm and the other at 10.26 µm. The maximum output peak powers delivered by these lasers were 11.9 and 11.1 kW respectively. The team focused the two beams into GaSe crystals with lengths between 2 and 47 mm.
“The electric fi elds from the two CO2 lasers at two different frequen-cies produce a nonlinear polariza-tion at the difference frequency (terahertz),” explained Ding. “As the two CO2 lasers propagate in the GaSe crystal, the terahertz radiation driven by the propaga-ting nonlinear polarization is spatially accumulated to produce the highest output power.”
TE R AHE RT Z PHOTONIC S
Mixed CO2 creates terahertz source
A highly effi cient quantum cas-cade laser (QCL) that operates continuous-wave (CW) at room temperature could provide a compact, portable and cost-effi cient source of mid-infrared radiation, say researchers in the US. Their QCL emits at 4.5 µm, has a wall-plug effi ciency of over
9.3% and a CW output power of 675 mW (Applied Physics Letters91 071101).
“Our device is unique because no other competing technol-ogies have been able to access this wavelength range,” Mani-jeh Razeghi, of Northwestern University in Illinois, told OLE.“This is the fi rst demonstration of high-power, high-tempera-ture CW operation.”
The superior performance achieved by Razeghi’s team is said to be due to improved mater-ial quality for both the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth and metal-organic chemical vapour deposition regrowth, and the use of a high thermal conductivity diamond submount.
“Our QCL consists of a lay-ered structure of GaInAs quan-tum wells and AlInAs quantum
barriers. All layers are grown on an InP substrate in a single growth step by gas-source MBE,” explained Razeghi. “A low-loss InP waveguide was also designed to increase the heat removal from the core due to the high thermal conductivity of InP compared with GaInAs.”
“Our goal is to achieve 1 W of output power and 50% effi-ciency,” concluded Razeghi.
Room temperature QCL emits in the IR
SOURC E S
Researchers from Lehigh University have found that frequency-mixing two CO2 laser beams in a nonlinear crystal generates coherent terahertz pulses.
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16 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
TECHNOLOGY
R&D/PATENTS
MICRO - OP TIC S
Intracavity microlens tunes VCSELA tunable singlemode VCSEL that uses an intracavity polymer microlens could be ideal for appli-cations such as spectroscopy and metrology, say researchers at Strathclyde University, UK. The simple idea can also be extended to work with VCSEL structures emitting at any wavelength (Optics Letters 32 2831).
“We wanted to develop a device with an ‘open access’ cavity into which analytes, gases and even cold atoms could be inserted,” Nicolas Laurand from Strath-clyde’s Institute of Photonics told OLE. “This is the fi rst time to our knowledge that a microlens has been used as an intracavity ele-ment in a tunable VCSEL.”
The team’s fi bre-VCSEL com-prises a bottom semiconductor distributed Bragg reflector fol-lowed by the active region. The polymer microlenses are fabri-cated directly on top of the active region. There is then a small air gap before an optical fi bre with
a dielectric mirror at its tip com-pletes the cavity.
According to Laurand, this confi guration has many signifi -cant advantages. “The output power is inherently fi bre coupled with the fi bre mirror acting as the output coupler,” he explained. “The microlens acts as a mode discriminator and maximizes the overlap between the pump spot and the fundamental cavity mode. This allows power scaling while keeping single transverse
mode operation. The microlens also allows a fl at fi bre mirror to be used, which optimizes coupling of the intracavity power into the fi bre mode.”
This approach can also be employed for VCSEL structures emitting at any wavelength. “Different wavelength windows can be reached simply by chang-ing the gain structure and, if necessary, the optical f ibre,” commented Laurand.
The team’s main challenge
was to fabricate the microlenses directly on top of the semicon-ductor gain structure. Once this had been perfected using a resist-ref low technique followed by reactive ion etching, the next step was to investigate the emission and tunability characteristics.
“The fi bre is fi xed on a piezo-electric translator that allows us to fi ne tune the position of the fi bre mirror with respect to the gain structure,” said Laurand. “This in turn changes the cavity length and the oscillating wave-length. The best overall laser characteristics are obtained for a gap of approximately 30 µm.”
The VCSEL was continuously tunable between 1028 and 1041 nm. For a pump power of 60 mW from an 808 nm diode laser the VCSEL’s output power remained above 6.5 mW across the entire tuning range. The team is working on further power-scal-ing and hopes to obtain an output power of tens of milliwatts.
PATENTS
To search for recently published applications, visit http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/ and http://ep.espacenet.com.
AWARDDataLase awarded patent for its transparent pigment technologyDataLase, UK, has been granted a patent for its transparent pigment technology. The patented pigment changes colour from white to black, forming a positive image when exposed to a computer-controlled low-power CO2 laser. The pigment can be applied to clear fi lms or substrates to provide information such as dates and barcodes on primary and secondary packaging.
MetaStable Instruments receives laser cleaning patentUS fi rm MetaStable Instruments has received a patent relating to its laser cleaning technique. US patent number 7,276,127 covers the cleaning of transparent materials by the total internal refl ection of electromagnetic radiation. The company expects that the new laser cleaning technique will improve the critical cleaning of fl at-panel display plates, wafers, masks, blanks and
windows. The company adds that the technique may also be used to photonically defrost windshields and windows.
LICENSINGNichia expands its patent cross licence with CreeNichia of Japan and Cree of the US have expanded their existing cross-licence agreement. The new deal expands on arrangements from 2002 and 2005 and includes additional patents relating to white LED technology and certain Cree patents relating to nitride lasers.
Holochip gains worldwide rights to adaptive lens patentsA licensing agreement has been signed between the University of Central Florida and Holochip Corporation, both US. Under the agreement, Holochip gains exclusive worldwide rights to the university’s adaptive lens patents, including fi ve US patents and numerous foreign applications.
The patented technologies will allow Holochip to make zoom lenses, such as those used in digital cameras and camera phones, with a dramatically smaller size without compromising clarity.
APPLICATIONVisEn Medical files application for its combined imaging systemVisEn Medical, US, has developed a combined X-ray and optical tomographic imaging system that, it claims, generates functional information at greater resolution than can be achieved by optical tomography alone. In patent application WO/2007/111669, the company explains that both the optical and X-ray sources and detectors are arranged on a gantry that rotates around an imaging chamber – a confi guration that allows X-ray and optical radiation to be directed into the object at multiple locations. According to the fi ling, X-ray data and light data are used together in optical tomographic reconstruction to achieve a more accurate and higher-resolution fi nal image.
microlens
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The microlenses are typically 44 µm in diameter and 5.5 µm in height.
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17OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
ASTRONOMY
Lightweight optics star in Hubble’s successor
When the multi-billion US dollar James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launches in 2013, it will be a monumental day for all involved. Optical technologies that until recently did not exist will be used in space for the fi rst time to gather infrared (IR) light from distant objects that have not yet been observed.
Among the suite of optical technologies is an innovative wavefront sensing and control (WFS&C) system and a primary mirror with a built-in support structure. But the scale of the mission means that it is rapidly approaching crunch time for researchers on the ground.
“Because many parts of the observa-tory take so long to build, we’ve actually already passed the critical design review for many elements,” John Decker, deputy associate director of JWST, told OLE. “For example, the lightweight mirrors take many years of polishing and testing. We are well on our way to building those mir-rors so that we fi nish on time to be able to integrate and test them.”
Lee Feinberg, optical telescope manager at NASA, agrees. “One of the key lessons learned from other programmes, including Hubble, is to start your technology early and mature it before you get into the devel-opment stage,” he said.
Once complete, there is little doubt that the fi nished telescope will be a unique opti-cal instrument. “To my knowledge this is the fi rst application of this type of complete set of technology,” said Feinberg. “We have borrowed a little from other telescopes and developed many unique technologies spe-cifi c to our application.”
Lightweight cryogenic mirrors The JWST will have a beryllium primary mirror, similar to the Spitzer Space Tel-escope. Spitzer was launched in 2003 to gather IR radiation from regions of star formation and from cooler objects in space, such as small stars. Beryllium’s coeffi cient of thermal expansion has an
extremely small variation making the tel-escope optics intrinsically stable to tem-perature variations.
About 95% of the beryllium is removed from the mirror during manufacture to make it as lightweight as possible. “The big difference is that the mirror area is about 50 times greater than that of Spitzer, but about a factor of three times lower in mass per unit area,” commented Feinberg. “Since we have such a large primary mirror, we needed to make it lighter weight for launch.”
The mirror is made up of 18 hexagonal segments, each measuring 1.32 m edge-to-edge. When each of the 18 individual seg-ments is properly aligned they act as a single monolithic primary mirror. “Although
they are not deformable mirrors, they do have some level of controllability,” com-mented Feinberg. “Each mirror segment is on a hexapod with six degrees of freedom. A seventh degree of freedom comes from an actuator in the centre of the mirror that can adjust the radius of curvature.”
Rigorous polishing ensures that the mir-ror is the correct shape. “JWST will be a 2 µm diffraction-limited telescope, whereas Spitzer was a 5 µm diffraction-limited tele-scope,” said Feinberg. “This means that we need approximately a factor of three times better optical quality.”
The mirrors will be deployed to within a couple of millimetres of the correct position and then the WFS&C system will be used to
Astronomers could soon be glimpsing farther back in time thanks to pioneering optics that are being built for the James Webb Space Telescope. Marie Freebody speaks to NASA’s John Decker and Lee Feinberg to fi nd out about the mirror and wavefront sensing technology.
Above: the wavefront sensing and control system calculates the mirror adjustments needed to focus an image. Top right: one of the 18 mirror segments. Bottom right: Artist’s concept of the telescope.
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18 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
bring them into fi ne alignment. “The mir-ror will be deployed using two wings that contain three primary mirror segments,” explained Feinberg. “The wings have drive mechanisms that will push them out and then a latching mechanism locks the two wings into place.”
Lightweight support structureThis is the fi rst time that a support structure will be incorporated as part of the mirror itself. It is this support structure that will be used with the WFS&C system to ensure that the 18 mirrors function as a single mirror.
“When we align the mirror using the
WFS&C system, we require the mirrors to be stable for about two weeks before we go through tweaking up the mirrors,” com-mented Feinberg. “This means that we need a support structure that is both light-weight but is also able to hold the mirrors in their aligned position when subjected to the changing temperature environment.”
Both the mirror and the support struc-ture have to be able to cool down from room temperature at launch to 30–55 K once in orbit. The semirigid mirror segment design is expected to be stable enough so that wave-front control adjustments will not be needed more than once every two weeks.
Wavefront sensing and controlThe WFS&C system aligns the 18 mirror segments so that their wavefronts match, creating a diffraction-limited 6.6 m tele-scope rather than overlapping images from 18 individual 1.3 m telescopes.
“One of the unique features of the JWST is that we did not want to have a dedicated wavefront sensor or put edge sensors on the mirrors as this is complicated to imple-ment,” explained Feinberg. “We realized a whole wavefront sensing control capa-bility by using images taken by the main science camera. The images can then be analysed on the ground using specially developed algorithms.”
The algorithm applies an optimization method to images taken in and out of focus at different wavelengths and at multiple fi eld points. The required mirror adjust-ment commands are then uplinked from the ground to the observatory.
“The WFS&C is used to align the tele-scope, starting from the very fi rst moment that we get light through the telescope where it can be misaligned by several mil-limetres,” explained Feinberg. “It goes through a multistep process, each step bringing the telescope more into align-ment fi rst with what we call a coarse align-
Left: the science team poses with the life-sized JWST model. Above: JWST’s 6.6 m primary mirror is 2.5 times larger than Hubble’s 2.4 m mirror.N
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OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
ment. We get them to within about one wavelength of light relative to each other and then fi nish with fi ne phasing.”
The purpose of fi ne phasing is to align the mirrors to better than 25 nm. The algorithms developed for the fi ne phasing were fi rst conceived to address the spher-ical aberration problem on Hubble.
“A phase retrieval technique was used to determine the spherical aberration on the Hubble Space Telescope by looking at defo-cused images and running them through a special algorithm,” explained Feinberg. “The algorithm that successfully corrected these errors was then developed for the WFS&C on the JWST.”
One of the biggest challenges faced by the team was to demonstrate the algorithms in a scaled model test bed of the JWST. “Once we built up the scale model, we went through the entire sequence from being a completely misaligned telescope through fine alignment and demonstrated that all of the pieces of the algorithms worked
sequentially,” said Feinberg.A lot of environments had to be con-
sidered in the design and testing of the observatory. “Not only thermal testing has to be carried out, but also a great deal of mechanical testing, acoustic testing and shaker table testing,” explained Feinberg. “We also analytically consider contamina-tion and radiation environments.”
It is hoped that the telescope will outlive its predicted 10-year lifetime. “We’ll keep operating it as long as we have the propul-
sive resources and as long as it has healthy equipment operating,” said Decker. “Ten years is the goal for the mission but we actually hope and believe that we will con-tinue for a number of years after that.”
Once the propulsive resources have run out, the telescope will lose the ability to maintain its orbit, which will decay over time. The observatory will then drift away in an uncontrolled orbit into space.
For details e-mail [email protected].
The JWST will have six times the light-gathering capability of the Hubble Space Telescope and will be able to see objects 400 times fainter than those observed by the best ground-based telescopes.
The JWST will examine every phase of cosmic history, from the fi rst luminous glows after the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies, stars and planets to the evolution of the solar system.
The JWST is named after former NASA Administrator, James E Webb, who led NASA between 1961 and 1968.
JWST basic factsLaunch date June 2013Mass 6500 kgWavelength 0.6–29 µmOrganization NASA, ESA and CSAUS cost $3.6 bn (through launch)Location 1.5 ×106 km from Earth at L2 (Lagrangian point)Mission length Five year minimum, 10 year goal
Primary mirrror statisticsDiameter 6.6 mCollecting area 25 m2
Mass 750 kgTemperature <50 KFocal length 131.4 mf number 20
JWST facts and fi gures
20 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
MICRO - OPTICS
High-power laser sources are used in a large variety of materials processing appli-cations. Today, the most common include welding, soldering, cutting, drilling, laser annealing, micromachining, ablation and microlithography. As well as choosing the right laser source, suitable high-perform-ance optics that generate the appropriate beam profi le are critical.
Adequate design software is a priority when you are developing the optics that are best suited to these applications. At LIMO, we have developed our own software that solves Maxwell’s equations and takes all of the important physical aspects of the beam-shaping task into account.
Various beam-shaping principles, such as phase shifting for singlemode lasers and beam mixing for multimode lasers, are applied when we design industrial beam-shaping solutions. The most widely used illumination geometries are squares, rec-tangles and lines, and these profi les – as well as other customized solutions – can be implemented effi ciently using microlens arrays with asymmetric lens profi les.
Free-form microlens surfaces can be structured cost-effectively on a wafer using LIMO’s unique production technology in tandem with computer-aided design. LIMO can structure theoretically optimized sur-faces into any material with high precision, including fused silica, BK7 and calcium fl u-oride for DUV applications and silicon, ger-manium and zinc selenide for CO2 lasers.
Micro-optics beam shaping improves the performance of many varieties of laser: gas, solid-state, fi bre and diode for example. The beam-shaping optics can be pre-aligned in compact and robust modules with well-defined interfaces and integrated into production systems for use in harsh envi-ronmental conditions. Such modules can also be enhanced using accessories rang-ing from simple telescopes up to complex measurement systems. The complete sys-tem is then placed into the collimated input beam and generates the required intensity profi le at the target.
Using this approach, we can obtain homogeneous light fields or light lines with dimensions spanning nine orders
of magnitude from the micrometre to the kilometre scale. The working distance can also vary from 100 µm up to several kilo-metres. The aspect ratio of lines (the width compared with the length of the line) can vary between 1:1 and more than 1:5000.
New applications are becoming feasible and the business cases for existing applica-tions are improving thanks to lens array beam shaping. Applying this technology to industrial diode laser systems with excellent beam quality, combined with falling dollar-per-watt prices creates new opportunities, particularly in areas such as direct-diode welding and cutting, and silicon thin-fi lm crystallization.
Direct diode applicationsCompact and robust high-power diode lasers are reliable tools for materials processing. Fibre-coupled devices with more than 1 kW of output power, delivered via fi bres with diameters ranging from 200 to 600 µm, are readily available for use in applications such as plastics welding, heat conduction weld-ing of stainless steel and soldering in semi-conductor, automotive or electronics.
But the potential scope of direct diode laser processing is much larger. New appli-cations such as microwelding of sensor housings or electrical contacts in PCB pro-duction; fi ne cutting of thin metal sheets; and soldering and annealing processes in semiconductor and display production illustrate this point.
Fibre-coupled and line-focus industrial ultrahigh-brightness diode lasers using simple interfaces and application-specifi c beam shaping and delivery create oppor-tunities by increasing throughput and easing integration into OEM production equipment. In-line process speed and reli-ability monitoring, as well as pre-produc-tion process verifi cation in applications test beds virtually eliminate all risk of compo-nent or process failure.
Numerous applications require a uniform illumination of the processed area. Intensity peaks in the profi le of the laser light might destroy the workpiece and intensity dips below the threshold of the process may leave the workpiece unfinished. Homogenizer
modules based on micro-optic lens arrays generate homogeneous intensity profiles with fl uctuations of less than 1% even at multi-kilowatt laser power levels.
Heat removal technology must also be considered when deciding on the appropri-ate laser system for your application. For diode lasers, there are two principal alter-natives: microchannel-based “active” and pure heat conduction-based “passive” heat
Lens array beam shaping is extending the scope of the laser materials processing market. Vitalij Lissotschenko and Paul Harten of LIMO explain why direct diode applications such as welding and cutting are in line to benefi t.
Beam shaping expands la
(Clockwise from top left) Fig. 1: conductive welding of fuel valves 400 µm, welded simultaneously in 3.7 s. The process was optimisesprings by means of point welding at 20 W peak power, spot size 50a 0.2 mm-thick kovar plate, output power 50 W, spot size 100 µm, 100 µm. Fig. 5: diode laser processing head with integrated sensocontrol the process. Fig. 6: crystallites in a re-crystallized 500 nmJena, Germany. Fig. 4: diode laser cutting head for fi bre-coupled d
LIMO
LIMO
21OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
sink architectures. Passive cooling can withstand fail-safe tap-water-based oper-ation without deionized water. Actively cooled systems may carry a lower initial price tag, but in the long term can cause a higher cost of ownership.
Beam shaping and delivery designs that have a high optical efficiency translate directly into lower operating currents and extend the lifetimes of diodes to 30 000 h and
beyond, according to ISO17526:2003(E). A low operating current also reduces the thermal load and allows compact cooling technologies to be used. When you couple all of these factors together, the end result is a reduction in capital expenditures, oper-ating cost savings and more effi cient use of limited production fl oor space.
Direct diode welding and cuttingA good illustration of how improved beam quality via lens array beam shaping trans-lates into economical processing is the conductive welding and cutting of small workpieces. In the past, pulsed lasers have been the sources of choice for materi-als processing. For example, pulsed laser sources with high repetition rates and nano-second pulse durations show a good pen-etration into highly refl ective materials.
However, many applications do not require a high peak pulse power. In con-ductive welding, a high peak pulse power turns out to be a disadvantage as the resulting weld seam can suffer from spill-ing and pores.
High-brightness, high-power diode lasers in combination with the right acces-sories can provide weld seams that are dif-fi cult to distinguish from the regular fi nish of the metal surface. A small beam spot size on the workpiece results in a high power density and a high process speed in either continuous- or quasi-continuous-wave modes of operation. The process is assisted by the good absorption of diode laser light between 808 and 980 nm in most metals. The tact times of the two fuel valve welds (see fi gure 1) are only 3.7 s.
Figure 2 shows the point welding of two steel springs. The microwelding process requires only three laser shots, each 4 µs in duration. A pulsed constant current supply controls the laser power accurately yield-ing a stable output power with less than 1% power fl uctuations. This means that the sta-ble joining of the steel springs is reproducible over the whole device life of the laser tool.
Choosing the correct process gas and gas flow avoids temper colours. In addition, the tensile strength of the joined parts is comparable with the strength of the mate-rial itself. Hydraulic measurements show a tensile strength of more than 28 kN. Both welds, rod-to-ball and ball-to-disc, are done simultaneously by one rotation of the device. After optimizing the process param-eters at a pre-production test bed within the
LIMO Applications Centre, the process was transferred straight into production.
To date, fusion cutting has been carried out using Nd:YAG and CO2 lasers. Again, today’s ultrahigh-brightness diode lasers are level in performance with these com-monly used sources and have demon-strated quality cutting of thin metal sheets and foils successfully.
Figure 3 shows a laser fusion cut of a 0.2 mm thick kovar plate. The process has a small thermal infl uence zone and a sharp kerf of only 100 µm. The corresponding cutting head is shown in fi gure 4.
Industrial diode laser system accesso-ries include sensors to increase the process stability and reliability. For processes with high-power stability, it is necessary to have online power and temperature control that is integrated into the processing head (see fi gure 5). A sample rate of 1 kHz allows the laser power to be adjusted every millisecond. A vision system with an integrated camera is deployed in the processing heads to posi-tion the laser beam on the workpiece.
Crystallization of thin fi lms Industrial crystallization of silicon thin fi lms has traditionally been dominated by excimer laser-based processes. The arrival of ultrahomogeneous line beams of up to several metres in length combined with the design freedom provided by lens array beam shaping creates new oppor-tunities in this application. Falling diode prices continue to improve the business case for very large systems with several tens of kilowatts of power.
Researchers at IPhT in Jena and CIS in Erfurt, both Germany, have used a main-tenance-free 350 W diode line laser to treat thin-fi lm solar cells. Micro-optic lens arrays are integrated into the laser head to shape the processing line making it scalable to several metres. Crystallization of 200 and 500 nm a-Si fi lms on a SixNy diffusion bar-rier on glass has been demonstrated. Large crystallites of more than 100 µm size are achieved at a scanning speed of 33 mm/s. The result is shown in fi gure 6.
Vitalij Lissotschenko is founder, president and chief executive offi cer of LIMO Lissotschenko Mikrooptik GmbH of Dortmund, Germany. Paul Harten is chief marketing offi cer and member of the executive board. For more information, see www.limo.de or e-mail [email protected].
aser processing potential
(rod to ball, and ball to disc) output power 185 W, spot size ed at LIMO’s Applications Centre. Fig. 2: joining of two thin steel 0 µm, three pulses of 4 µs duration. Fig. 3: laser fusion cut of cutting speed 1 m/min, cutting gas pressure 10 bar, kerf size ors: power meter, pyrometer, camera and digital interfaces to
m silicon thin fi lm on glass using a diode laser courtesy of IPhT, diode lasers, cooling and process gas guiding is included.
LIMO
LIMO
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23OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
REGIONAL FOCUS
Israeli ingenuity powers photonics sector surge
The Israeli photonics industry employs around 4000 people in 100 companies, a considerable presence in a country with a total labour force of only 2.8 mil-lion. Isra el’s economy is growing fast. The country has experienced fi ve years of con-tinuous growth, the longest period in its history, including a projected 5% growth during 2007. In 2006 the World Economic Forum ranked Israel as the 15th most com-petitive economy in the world.
That growth has been fuelled by a steady increase in exports and foreign invest-ment. Exports have risen by an average of 13% over each of the past three years, while overall foreign investment in 2006 was a record $25.8 bn (718.1 bn), a 171% increase over 2005.
Military applications have historically been the main feature of the country’s industry, and Israel will account for 10% of the world’s military equipment exports in 2007. Today, the military presence in the optics fi eld is falling. “10 years ago perhaps 90% of our business was military-related. Today it’s somewhere between 40 and 60%,” commented Yitzhak Raif, corporate vice- president of Ophir Optronics’ Optics Group, one of Israel’s largest optics companies.
At the other end of scale, start-up com-panies are proliferating, encouraged by a culture of entrepreneurship and the ease of bringing new products to market. “This is a land of start-ups. There are more than 2000 high-tech start-ups in Israel,” said Niles Fleischer, vice-president of business development at NanoMaterials. “Israel has the third highest venture capital invest-ment in the world in absolute terms, but per capita it is number one. There have been some rapid changes: this business park was an orange grove a few years ago.”
Established player: Ophir OptronicsOphir Optronics in Jerusalem manufac-tures and supplies infrared (IR) optics and laser measurement equipment to the milit-ary, security, commercial and industrial
markets. Formed in 1976, it is an estab-lished player in the Israeli market, employ-ing over 100 people locally.
The Ophir Optics Group produces optical lens assemblies for MWIR and LWIR cooled and uncooled cameras, optical elements, and high-power CO2 optics for industrial lasers. The Laser Measurement Group pro-duces equipment to test the power, energy and profi le of lasers.
The company recognizes that local fac-tors have contributed to its success. “We manufacture in Israel, which until recently was a low-cost country,” explained Raif. “The internal market for us was small, only a fraction of a percent. And it helped that our major competitor was American as they had to negotiate US export regulations.”
As well as two manufacturing sites in Israel, Ophir also has a plant in Massachu-setts, US. “As a company, we’ll go where ever the business takes us, transferring the tech-nology whenever possible,” said Raif. “But the core know-how will remain in Israel.”
The Ophir Optics Group has enjoyed strong growth in each of the last four years, a pattern Raif expects to continue. “IR applications are growing faster than the industry can supply new products,” he said. “We are seeing a lot of activity in low-cost optics, and a lot of R&D is focused on low-cost cameras for consumer applications.”
Ophir’s automotive market is growing as IR optics begin to appear in luxury cars. “Soon all luxury cars of BMW 5 level will incorporate IR optics, and eventually the
Israel’s government attributes the country’s success in photonics to a combination of strong academia carrying out world-class research, a well-developed optoelectronics industry and an active venture-capital community. Tim Hayes went to see for himself.
Top: Weizmann Institute campus with the famous Koffl er accelerator in the background. Bottom left: Ophir Optronics production room. Bottom right: Orbotech PCB inspection machine.
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24 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
REGIONAL FOCUS
price will fall to the point where cheaper cars will incorporate them too,” said Raif.
Commercial applications are also increasing, especially the security and surveillance markets. “Soon IR cameras will be able to substitute for visible light cameras in buildings and in smoke-vision systems used to evacuate buildings,” added Raif. “Units for fi re-fi ghting applica-tions are currently expensive, anywhere between $8000 and $14 000. But as more are sold, the price will fall.”
Established player: OrbotechFrom its Yavne headquarters, Orbotech provides automated optical inspection (AOI), laser imaging and computer-aided manufacturing technologies for electron-ics manufacturers. Formed in 1981 and employing 1500 people, the company is active in three different markets: bare printed circuit boards (PCBs), assembled PCBs, and fl at-panel displays (FPDs). The company has 400 engineers working on research, with an R&D budget of $60 m.
Inspection machines for bare PCBs account for 60% of sales, with inspection of glass panels for FPDs another 23%. China alone accounts for 30% of the com-pany’s sales.
“In our inspection systems, Orbotech’s core technologies are the optics systems designed to remain accurate even at high magnifi cations, the lighting systems able to illuminate defects just a few microns in size, and data acquisition to process the resulting data,” said Dan Zemer, director of new technologies.
Orbotech’s PCB inspection machine uses an LED light source shining a line illumin-ation onto a PCB from two angles, with a camera positioned 35 mm above looking for defects. “Our camera’s resolution level is of the order of microns, and at that level a single mobile telephone could contain thousands of features that need to be spot-ted,” Zemer said.
As fl at-panel displays are getting larger, so inspection machines are growing alongside them. Orbotech has developed a machine in which the glass sits on an air cushion, steered on its course by controlled areas of vacuum. This concept was imple-mented on inline systems, measuring criti-cal dimension and overlay.
In FPD inspection the number crunching involved is daunting, as the system must analyse results from several square metres in about one minute. “We’ve developed our own in-house processing algorithm to handle this,” said Zemer. “30 fl at-panel fabs have already implemented our EYES-2020 package, connecting all production stages
of the automated inspection process and providing data for the process engineers.”
In a land of start-ups, established com-panies such as Orbotech need to fi ght their corner. “In Israel it can be diffi cult to attract the best people,” Zemer commented. “The best students have a choice, whether to go into one of the many start-ups or into estab-lished companies like Orbotech. We’re pro-active, heavily involved with university physics and maths departments, actively searching for the best people.”
The company also takes an active role in determining its future direction. “We are very forward-looking. A group of 30 tech-nologists and experts within the company, called the Technology Infrastructures Group, specifi cally looks at new concepts, new avenues for the future and new tech-nologies to develop. This is a different philosophy than some Israeli companies adopt.” By acquiring Danish Diagnos-tic Development based in Copenhagen, Orbotech recently established its medical division and made its fi rst strategic move into med ical imaging technology, a grow-ing market with customers willing to pay for differentiating imaging technologies.
Start-up: NanoMaterialsNanoMaterials is the R&D centre of ApNano Materials, a private US company commercializing nanospheres and nano-tubes. The company’s nanospheres are made from multiwalled inorganic fuller-enes with a nested onion-skin structure. Established in 2002 and funded by private investors, its technology is based on a decade’s worth of R&D at Rehovot’s Weiz-mann Institute of Science.
“When the particles are combined in a nickel matrix, the result can be a ‘black coating’, absorbing as much of 98% of vis-ible and near-IR irradiated light without reflectance,” said Niles Fleischer, vice-president of business development. “No organic materials are involved, and the coatings combine zero outgassing under vacuum with high temperature stability up to 1000 ºC.”
Applications include solar power- station towers, night-vision systems and telescopes. This optics breakthrough is a direct spin-off from Israel’s national focus on nanotech-nology, an effort that has led to the country ranking second in the world for scientifi c articles in the fi eld per capita.
Oree is a model of a modern Israeli optics company. Established in 2004 and funded by venture capital from Israel and Europe, it is developing next-generation LED illumination and making what it says is the fi rst planar, thin, fl exible LED for FPDs and solid-state lighting.
Oree’s technology includes a planar fl exible light guide made from a multilayer polymer-based transparent sheet less than 800 µm thick. Single or multiple LEDs can be embedded into the polymer. It can also act as a mixer and combine the RGB input into white light in a short optical path: RGB enters the polymer and planar white light emerges.
“The polymer encapsulation is the core technology,” said chief executive offi cer Eran Fine. “Getting the best lumen per dollar and lumen per watt is important. Our technology scores on both counts.”
With a board of advisors from companies such as Sharp and Hewlett-Packard, as well as ties to academic institutions like Israel’s Technion and the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, Oree is looking to expand its 15-strong workforce.
Fine was asked if it is hard to operate in this kind of business from Israel. “Yes, it can be,” he replied. “This country has a huge high-tech industry sector, but it’s largely geared up for export. The fl at-panel industry always has one
leg in the Far East where the manufacturing is, and one leg in the west where the money is. It’s also a very young industry, drawing in people from other businesses and drawing on their expertise.”
Oree, whose name comes from “my light” in Hebrew, has progressed without government funding or grants, a deliberate choice by the founders. “Government funding has implications for the intellectual property and there are always some strings attached. Help is certainly available in a country with so many start-ups, but we decided not to go down that route. In Israel, companies tend to follow the optimal business model, but in some circumstances that might not be the best one.”
One to watch: Oree
Oree’s prototype planar backlight unit for FPDs.
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REGIONAL FOCUS
The academic engineGovernment funding and historical circum-stances have combined to give Israel a thri-ving optics research community. Targeted research programmes from the state and a strong tradition of academics returning to Israel from high-calibre posts abroad have kept up the momentum, despite there being only seven universities in the country.
There are also strong links between aca-demic institutions and industry. Technol-ogy from the Weizmann Institute of Science
in Rehovot is at the heart of the nanospheres production process used by NanoMater ials, while a faculty dean from the Technion sits on the advisory board guiding Oree. In Israel, co-operation between the two com-munities is commonplace.
The Technion, or Israel Institute of Tech-nology in Haifa, teaches its undergraduates only in Hebrew, a clear statement of intent to keep the country at the forefront of aca-demic research. One focus of research at the Technion is nonlinear optics, as researcher
Sharon Shwartz explains. “We have demonstrated that laser light
causes significant lattice deformation within the bulk of CdZnTe:V crystals, which increases linearly with light intensity and quadratically with an applied electric fi eld up to 0.15%,” he said. “This light-induced electrostriction is accom panied by an enor-mous enhancement of the electro-optic effect, resulting in a change in refractive index of about 0.01.”
This could lead to applications in light defl ection and the manufacture of control-lable prisms, in which the extent of defl ec-tion depends on the intensity of the applied illumination.
At the Weizmann Institute, optics research is carried out in the physics, chemistry and mathematics faculties. There is no engineering faculty as such at Weizmann, which is not the only unusual feature of the Institute. It has less than 1000 students, while the Technion has 12 000. “We do not take undergraduates, only higher degrees, masters and PhDs,” explained Yaron Silber berg, dean of the Faculty of Physics, at Weizmann. “Teach-ing is not the main mission, and the boundaries between faculties are almost non-existent. Graduate students are the engine of what we do here.”
At the same time as the range of gov-ernment funding available has led to a proliferation of start-ups, the Weizmann Institute has moved away somewhat from state support. “Our funding comes from an independent higher-education body with-out too much government control,” Silber-berg pointed out. “Lately there’s been some erosion of this ideal, but even so, about 35% of our budget is connected to government sources, which is about half the fi gure of some other universities.”
Yeda Research and Development is responsible for technology transfer from the Weizmann Institute into industry. It holds an exclusive agreement to market and commercialize new developments emerg-ing from the Institute’s laboratories.
With established and emerging Israeli companies exploiting domestic photonics research so successfully, the momentum in photonics R&D at Weizmann is a fair refl ection of the energy in the fi eld across the whole country. “We’ve just hired one staff member in plasmonics, one in quan-tum computing and another in attosecond physics,” commented Silberberg. “This entire fi eld is bubbling.”
Thanks to: Smadar Mizrahi and Uri Pachter of the Israel Export Institute, Gil Erez at the Israeli Embassy, and David Ezra.
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27OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
PRODUCT GUIDE
Telecentric lenses aid machine vision accuracy
Despite machine vision being one of the fastest-growing fi elds in optics, users often struggle when choosing the right compo-nents for their system. Electronic parts, cameras and software are expensive items, and the optic, which is responsible for the final visual reproduction of the object, cannot be neglected simply due to a lack of expertise. In this article, we hope to dispel some of the typical concerns that users have when selecting optics for machine vision.
Where do I start?If you are looking for a quick solution, a good option is to contact one of the known suppliers of complete machine vision sys-tems. You can fi nd good package deals on the market for standard applications such as sorting, inspecting and measuring. However, if you have special requirements, this approach will soon reach its limits.
The next option is to study the large vari-ety of optical components that are available in catalogues. If you do not fi nd a suitable solution, your only option is to contact a supplier that offers specially manufactured solutions as well as new designs. Do not be deterred by this option. Low volumes are usually available at affordable prices and it is worth achieving your ideal result with specifi cations suited exactly to your needs instead of making costly and unsatisfac-tory compromises.
Endocentric or telecentric lenses?Before approaching a supplier, ask yourself what result you would like your system to achieve. Is the task to gather measurements and evaluate them using a computer, or a simple observation task conducted via a monitor? In addition, you need to know if you require a standard charge-coupled device (CCD) lens (known as an endocen-tric lens) or a telecentric lens.
An endocentric lens reproduces the object perspectively, in the same way as a standard photographic lens, whereas a tele centric lens dissolves the perspective.
As telecentric lenses produce a parallel path of rays, it is possible to measure, for example, the diam eter of the object inde-pendent of its location.
The object that you are studying will dictate the type of lens that is required. If you require a simple overview of an object, then a standard lens will most likely be suf-fi cient. This is also the case for simple meas-uring and monitoring tasks. However, if
you want to measure drill holes exactly, or if the parts to be measured are on dif-ferent levels, it is better to use a telecentric lens. The same is true if your measurement requires a high level of accuracy.
The distortion of a telecentric lens is far lower than that of a standard CCD lens. In addition, the telecentric range is usually greater than the depth of focus, so the posi-tion of the object is not critical. The object can be evaluated despite slight blurring.
It is vital that you choose a telecentric lens that can illuminate your camera’s sen-sor. Most lenses are suitable for use with smaller sensors such as 1/4- or 1/3-inch for-mats. Today, many suppliers produce lenses for larger sensors, but in some cases it may be necessary to have a new optic developed.
Telecentric optionsTelecentric lenses are available for nearly all reproduction scales between 0.04 and 20×. It is important to note that the char-acteristics of the optics will vary greatly depending on the magnifi cation. A lens with a reproduction scale of 0.04× will have a large external diameter, a long working distance and is usually only avail-able for smaller sensors. A magnifying lens on the other hand can have a very small external diameter, a relatively short work-ing distance and will be compatible with larger sensors. The external diameter is determined by the object size.
Standard telecentric lenses are said to be object-side telecentric. This means that the parallel beams originating from the object are reproduced on the sensor. Image-side telecentric lenses are also available and work like standard CCD lenses. These lenses have an aperture angle on the object side and reproduce in a telecentric manner on the sensor side. This is advantageous when using larger sensors or when the sensor is equipped with a microlens array. Image-sided tele-centricity also helps to prevent non-homo-geneous illumination of the sensor.
Finding the right set of lenses for your machine vision system can be a daunting task. Wiebke Marzahn of Sill Optics addresses some common concerns by breaking the puzzle
down into a number of key questions to ask yourself before starting your search.
image with a standard lens
image with a telecentric lens
The characteristics of telecentric lenses (top) vary depending on their magnifi cation. A telecentric lens (bottom) dissolves the perspective.
Sill
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28 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
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The last category is double-sided telecen-tricity, which combines the advantages of both systems described above. There is virtually no distortion with double-sided telecentricity. If the highest possible meas-uring accuracy is your goal, then a double-sided telecentric lens is the best option.
Illumination for machine visionWhen selecting your lens, it is important to consider your illumination source. Stand-ard ring or area lights can be used with tele-centric lenses, but if you want to exploit the characteristics of the lens fully, telecentric illumination should be used, especially if high accuracy is important.
Telecentric illumination is available in two variations: as transmitted light illu-mination with a telecentric condenser, and as surface illumination integrated into the lens. In the second case, the reproduction optic is used as the illumination optic.
When you are imaging non-transparent objects, you illuminate the object from the camera side with surface illumination. If you illuminate with ring lights, area lights or fi bre bundles, shadows can appear on the object and complicate the evalua-tion. In comparison, telecentric surface illu mination (which is integrated into the lens) results in uniform illumination of the object. Polarization effects can be used to
continuously adjust the contrast between diffusely and directly refl ected light with a quarter-wave plate.
Transmitted light illumination is more suitable for measuring an outline, monitor-ing semi-transparent objects and objects with drill holes. So-called condensers are equipped with LEDs and can be obtained as telecentric illumination or partial dif-fuse illumination. When using the latter, the alignment effort is reduced as these do not have to be placed exactly on the optical axis of the object. Standard light tables are suffi cient to achieve diffuse background illumination. However, since unwanted refl ections may occur on the edges of the object that can lead to an inaccurate evalu-ation, telecentric illumination is an alter-native to achieve maximum accuracy.
Critical factors to considerOnce you have decided to use a telecentric lens, there are several other key quanti-ties that you should have to hand before approaching any supplier. These are the size of your image sensor, the size of your object fi eld (including some tolerance for adjusting) and the working distance that you require. The camera connection as well as the fl ange distance should also be known.
Telecentric lenses are available for nearly all reproduction scales between 0.04 and 20×.
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PRODUCT GUIDE
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The maximum overall length and maxi-mum diameter of the optic should be clear if the lens is to be incorporated into a tight space or a machine. We recommend that you consider gathering vibration informa-tion to help decide whether the lens casing needs to be glued or secured. If you plan to translate or scan the lens, you should determine the maximum lens weight that your system can cope with. Finally, you must know the required resolution if a critical measuring task is concerned. For this, however, it is suffi cient to know the pixel size of your sensor and the size of the structures to be measured.
OutlookThe object fi elds that are being tested with telecentric lenses are continually increas-
ing. As the front lens has to be at least as big as the object, telecentric lenses are in turn getting larger, a trend that has become more noticeable over the last few years.
The steady increase in the size of image sensors is also pushing the size of the lenses to even higher levels to ensure that the entire sensor is illuminated. The numerical aper-ture of the lens is also steadily increasing. This is important as pixels get smaller and
the camera’s resolution improves. However, it does not make sense to simply increase the resolution of the camera, since the image will still be blurred if the lens does not offer the appropriate resolution.
Wiebke Marzahn is project manager at Sill Optics GmbH. For more information, see www.silloptics.de or e-mail [email protected].
Q How do you calculate the reproduction scale?A Many users depend on the values for object fi elds for certain sensor sizes found in look-up tables. In reality, it is simple to determine the object fi eld using just the sensor size and the reproduction scale of a lens as magnifi cation is equal to image size divided by object size. This easy formula will ease the pre-selection of a lens.
Q What is the difference between telecentricity and depth-of-fi eld?A These are two fundamentally different quantities and should not be confused. The
depth-of-fi eld determines an area in front of and behind the working plane that can still be counted as focused. Telecentricity designates the area in which the lens has a parallel (telecentric) path of rays.
Q Why do telecentric lenses differ so much in price from other optics? A The front lens of a telecentric lens has to be at least as large as the diagonal of the object fi eld since only main rays running parallel to the optical axis reach the optic. This means that the front lens of some optics becomes very large and as more glass is required, the price increases.
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“Telecentric lenses must be able to illuminate the camera’s sensor.”
31OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
PRODUCTSIf you would like your company’s products to be featured in this section,
send your press releases and images to Marie Freebody (e-mail [email protected]).
Laser diode moduleFrankfurt Laser Company
Frankfurt Laser Company is now offering the HEML series of high-power temperature-stabilized laser diode modules for machine-vision
applications in harsh environments. The modules provide a crisp, uniform line with sharp ends and can also be equipped with various optics including Gaussian line and diffractive optics.
Each module is specifi ed with a stable power output (<1%) and wavelength (<0.5 nm) over the 0–40 °C range. TTL modulation of up to 1 MHz (532 nm up to 10 kHz) and analogue modulation of up to 10 kHz is standard. Applications include positioning, alignment, metrology and quality control, as well as machine vision.www.frlaserco.com
Light test softwareLabsphere
For research and development, quality control and production of LEDs and LED products, Labsphere says that its LightMtrX light
metrology software platform offers an unmatched level of usability and fl exibility. Windows XP and Vista compliant, the software includes intuitive calibration and user-friendly interfaces. MtrX-SPEC calibrates and analyses spectral radiometric, photometric and colorimetric properties of LEDs. For spatial measurement, MtrX-LSA controls Labsphere’s series of CDS spectrometers, LSA 3000 LED Spatial Analyzer, auxiliary source meters and temperature controllers.www.labsphere.com
Gigabit Ethernet cameraProsilica
Prosilica has released the GC2450 gigabit Ethernet camera, which measures 33 ×46 ×43 mm. The
GC2450 runs at 15 frames per second at a resolution of 2456 ×2048 over a GigE Vision-compliant gigabit Ethernet interface and does not require a frame grabber. The product uses Sony’s 5 Mpixel ICX-625 progressive-scan CCD sensor with global electronic shutter suitable for capturing high-speed motion events.
Key features of the camera include programmable exposure controls, area-of-interest readout, advanced binning modes, 12-bit readout, asynchronous external trigger and sync I/O, auto-iris control, and RS-232 peripheral
port. The camera comes with a free software development kit and is said to suit inspection and general machine-vision applications.www.prosilica.com
High-speed cameraPhotron
The Fastcam MC1, a high-speed camera designed specifi cally for production-line fault fi nding and process control is now available
from Photron. The small 35 mm cubed remote-head camera delivers 2000 frames per second (fps) at full resolution, and up to 10 000 fps at reduced resolution.
The head connects to a compact processor unit via a fl exible, shielded 7 m camera cable. Two memory options provide either 2 s (1 GB) or 4 s (2 GB) of record time at full 2000 fps resolution and 8 s (1 GB) or 16 s (2 GB) at 500 fps. For machine-vision applications, the remote-head camera is fi tted with a C-mount lens adaptor. Power supply is 24 V DC, although an AC power supply is provided.www.photron.com
Fibre-coupled modulesQPC
QPC has introduced BrightLase high-power fi bre-coupled modules emitting 45 W of output power from a 100 µm
fi bre at 808 and 976 nm, and 25 W at 1532 nm from a 400 µm fi bre. The company says that its modules feature an industry-leading brightness and are designed for direct application and pumping fi bre and solid-state lasers.www.qpclasers.com
Digital CCD microscopeMoritexMoritex has introduced the MSX-500Di 2.11 Mpixel digital CCD microscope. The device features an integrated 3.5 inch TFT LCD monitor and SD card fl ash memory storage. The CCD imaging system and high-intensity LED lighting enables the device to deliver images from 1 to 500× magnifi cation without changing lenses. A freeze button allows switching between still images and video mode. The MSX-500Di is also able to call up and display recorded images for comparative tasks.www.moritex.com
OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
PRODUCTS
32
Optical engine modulesLiekki Corporation
Liekki has moved forward from the prototype stage to general availability of its 100 W CW optical engine modules. The
optical engines integrate the entire fi bre amplifi er or laser glass elements, such as active fi bres, passive fi bres, pump combiners, fi bre-Bragg gratings, pump dumps and fi lters into a thermally engineered package. This enables fi bre laser manufacturers or system integrators to reduce the product development time and to concentrate on the full system development and integration.www.liekki.com
Laser-beam stabilizationMRC Systems
MRC Systems says that its new Dynamic-2 laser-beam stabilization system offers increased control bandwidth
compared with its existing Dynamic system. The Dynamic-2 can be equipped with faster piezo-driven x-y actuators and reaches bandwidths of more than 1 kHz. The tilting range of the actuators has also been increased to ±4 mrad.
The company says that its product is an ideal tool to compensate for shocks, vibrations and other sources of laser misalignment with fast rise times. The system can be used for different alignment challenges, such as fi ring femtosecond lasers into hollow fi bres or overlapping UV lasers with electron beams.www.mrc-systems.de
Optical design softwareOptical Research Associates
The latest release of Optical Research Associates’ CODE V optical design software is said to improve
both the modelling and optimization of optical systems. For example, CODE V 9.8 allows users to perform actions such as combining multiple images, adjusting gamma or compensating for known detector characteristics. Users can also extract various parameters of the simulated image, including colour and luminance values.
The optimization capabilities of CODE V have also been extended to account for the effects of manufacturing tolerances and allow the designer to create more tolerance-insensitive design forms. Specifi cally, a new macro function that accesses the program’s fast wavefront differential tolerancing capability (the TOR analysis feature) enables the designer to optimize for best fabricated performance, rather than simply best nominal performance.www.opticalres.com
Regenerative amplifi erHigh Q Laser
The femtoREGEN UC from High Q Laser is a femtosecond regenerative amplifi er delivering 2 W of
power and 350 fs pulses at a repetition rate of 200 kHz. With a footprint of 34 ×78 cm, the system is based on Yb-doped laser materials and uses High Q’s patent-pending intracavity chirped pulse amplication design.
The compact housing integrates all pump laser diode modules, the seed oscillator and the amplifi er. A semiconductor-saturable absorber mirror assures passive and self-starting mode-locking for high temporal stability. The product comes in a single 19-inch unit hosting all supply and control functions for turn-key operation and includes a CAN bus and 24 V power supply.www.highqlaser.at
Thermopile-based detectorGentec
The XLP12 detector is now available from Gentec-EO. The thermopile-based detector is said to be suitable for low-power measurements in both the microwatt and milliwatt regimes with low thermal drift.
Offering a fl at broadband response, the XLP12 has a noise equivalent power as low as 1 µW. According to the fi rm, the detector is ideally suited for any pulsed or CW low-power laser.www.gentec-eo.com
Silicon photomultiplierSensL
Combining a high-performance sensor, epoxy T05 package and low-cost format,
SensL has released the SPMScint, a device designed for use with scintillators in radiation-detection applications. The SPMScint is a solid-state detector sensitive to single photons. The detector consists of an array of Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes.
The SPMScint combines the high gain and quantum effi ciency characteristics of photomultiplier tube detectors with the additional benefi ts of silicon technology, such as compact size, magnetic fi eld insensitivity, low operating voltage, robustness and tolerance to over-exposure. The detector surface can be placed in close proximity (<1 mm) to an emitting surface of a scintillator crystal. www.sensl.com
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OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
EMCCD camerasAndor TechnologyAndor Technology has launched its new iCam technology, a combined fi rmware and software package, which will now be offered as a standard feature on the company’s iXonEM+ and LucaEM product lines.
“iCam allows for faster frame rates in software by using dedicated timing patterns that eliminate unnecessary overhead times,” commented Andor’s Colin Coates. “This, alongside state-of-the-art bi-directional communication between camera and PC, facilitates unparalleled tight synchronization with other peripheral equipment such as fi lter wheel, laser-AOTF or z-stage. A ‘ring mode’ offers the capacity to use up to 16 different timing patterns uploaded into the camera head so trigger events can yield virtually instantaneous switching between exposure channels”. www.andor.com
Ti:sapphire oscillatorFemtolasers
The Integral from Femtolasers is a fully integrated ultrafast Ti:sapphire oscillator. An improved laser cavity allows the user
to choose power levels of up to 400 mW with low noise fi gures compared with around 150 mW from previous models. Ultrashort pulses of less than 10 fs in duration as well as nearly Gaussian-shaped spectra with a bandwidth of greater than 120 nm are available depending on the Integral model. All Integrals can be operated via a 19-inch user interface or a computer interface allowing full process control. Applications include terahertz generation, amplifi er seeding and materials processing.www.femtolasers.com
Spectral calibrationMcPherson
McPherson’s Spectral Test Station provides a 100 mm diameter collimated and wavelength-variable monochromatic light
beam to illuminate, spectrally calibrate and document radiometric sensitivity and response characteristics of spectral and hyperspectral sensors. It delivers discrete bands of selected monochromatic light, and scans selected regions between 200 nm UV and 14 µm LWIR wavelengths.
The system can be used for QC testing of multiple detector chips, CCDs or focal plane arrays in a given wavelength range and for given pixel responsiveness. Chips on substrates up to four inches in size can be tested. Output beam collimation is interferometrically tested.www.mcphersonInc.com
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Inside this ultra-compact package is an all-glass body that incorporates a refl ection grating and a permanently aligned CMOS linear image sensor. The device can be easily adapted to your design requirements, without compromising stability. Other benefi ts include ruggedness, low stray light, and long-term stability of spectral cali-bration. Ideal for mass production needs.
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PRODUCTS
OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
Linear motor actuatorPI
PI (Physik Instrumente) has introduced the N-310 NEXACT miniature ceramic linear motor actuator. The device measures
25 ×25 ×12 mm and weighs 50 g (1.7 oz). The actuator provides 10 N of push/pull force, 20 mm of travel and speeds of 10 mm/s. The non-magnetic and vacuum-compatible design is self-locking and offers picometer resolution and operating voltages of around 40 V. The company lists typical applications as laser tuning, nanotechnology, nano-imprint, semiconductor and data-storage test and production equipment, nanomanipulation and biotechnology.www.pi.ws
UV laserCoherent
The Paladin Compact 355-4000 UV laser from Coherent delivers 4 W of quasi-CW output at 355 nm. The company claims that OEMs will benefi t from the low cost
of ownership, small size, high-quality output and operational simplicity. The laser can be air- or water-cooled.
The beam parameters (diameter 1 mm, M²<1.2) of the Compact are said to be identical to the larger-sized 4 W Paladin model to ensure that it is easy to use with existing optical designs. Typical applications include laser direct imaging of high-density printed circuit boards as well as semiconductor wafer inspection. www.coherent.com
Miniature chip LEDRohm
Rohm has introduced three new miniature chip LEDs. The PicoLED-eco ultracompact LEDs are said to combine high brightness with lower power consumption. Available in red, orange,
yellow and green, they suit portable, battery-driven devices and thin low-energy products.
PicoLED-RGB three-colour LEDs are available in 4-pin and 6-pin top-view confi gurations, and a 0.5 mm-thick side-view confi guration. PicoLED-mini is claimed to be the smallest LED in the industry, at 0.6 ×0.3 ×0.2 mm. They are available in red, orange, yellow, green, yellowish green, blue and white. All PicoLEDs feature four-element construction (AlGaInP) to prevent brightness degradation and ensure reliable long-term use.www.rohmelectronics.com
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Tunable mid-IR laserLaser2000Laser2000 is now distributing a range of tunable mid-IR external cavity lasers from Daylight Solutions. The lasers are available pulsed at wavelengths of 5.1, 8.0, 8.5, 9.2, 9.7, 10.1 and 10.5 µm; and CW wavelengths of 4.5, 4.9, 5.3, 6.2, 8.4, 10.4 and 10.5 µm. Each laser is tunable up to ±5% of its wavelength with an average power output of 70 mW CW and 350 mW pulsed.
The company says that the lasers operate at room temperature and require no cryogenic cooling, which can create a small and robust system suitable for applications such as molecular detection and imaging.www.laser2000.co.uk
High-defi nition lensSchneider Group
The Schneider Group’s MacroVaron 85mm f4.5 lens features Schneider–Kreuznach’s continuous aberration suppression (CAS) technology. The CAS
technology within the lens, MRV 4.5/85 CAS 0.5×–2.0×, is said to enable the use of ultrahigh resolution down to 2.5 µm over the magnifi cation range from 0.5 to 2.0×, with uniform performance over the entire range.
Features such as a 62 mm image circle, low distortion and excellent chromatic correction are said to make the MacroVaron lens ideal for high-resolution line-scan applications up to 12k (and down to 5 µm pixel sizes), such as those used in fl at-panel display and printed circuit-board inspection systems.www.schneiderindustrialoptics.com
Array and light engineEnfi sThe latest UNO neutral white array from Enfi s is said to produce an output of 1365 lm from an emitting area of just 0.5 cm2. Enfi s will also be integrating the arrays into its range of UNO Light Engines to offer customers a complete solution with fully integrated electronic and thermal management. The company adds that users can benefi t from quality white light from a highly effi cient and powerful spot source with long-lasting and reliable performance. Both the array and light engine are in full production.www.enfi s.com
FluorimeterGilden Photonics
The new fl uoroSENS single-photon-counting fl uorimeter from Gilden Photonics is claimed to guarantee a signal-to-noise ratio
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of 3000:1. It uses a 150 W Xenon lamp to avoid photobleaching of biosamples and comes with a reference detector for corrected excitation and corrected emission spectra as standard. An optional transmission detector to check sample stability is also available.www.gildenphotonics.com
Infrared cameraCedip
The ADAMANT IR camera from Cedip Infrared Systems includes a 640 ×512 MCT 15 µm pitch focal plane array and a triple fi eld-of-view
(FOV) lens all packaged in an enclosure weighing 9 kg. The lens features a wide 21.7 ×17.5° FOV, a medium range 6.9 ×5.5° FOV and a narrow 1.7 ×1.4° FOV enabling detection of a tank-sized object at 16 km.
ADAMANT is available with Ethernet or optical fi bre output, allowing remote control and video display over long distances. For OEM operators, it is also available as a core package without the enclosure and the front window.www.cedip-infrared.com
Video capture cardMatrox ImagingMatrox Imaging has announced the Matrox Morphis DVR-16, a scalable video-capture card with real-time multichannel compression
designed for use with digital video recorders. The DVR-16 captures from NTSC, PAL, RS-170 and CCIR video sources.
The Morphis DVR-16 is a PCI/PCIe card that is scalable and can record from 4 to 16 channels of compressed video and audio. Each channel supports motion, blind and night detection, as well as detection of video loss. The hardware engine can perform real-time compression in MJPEG, and MPEG-4 formats. The display overlay also supports region blanking. Software support is available for Microsoft Windows XP.www.matrox.com
Raman imagingWITec
WITec has introduced an ultrafast Raman imaging option for the alpha300R confocal Raman microscope, claimed to reduce the acquisition time for a single Raman
spectrum to as little as 1.7 ms. The improved sensitivity can be advantageous for delicate samples requiring the lowest possible levels of excitation power. Time-resolved investigations of fast dynamic processes can also benefi t from the ultrafast spectral acquisition times. The imaging option is available as an optional feature of the alpha300R microscope, and the confocal imaging upgrades of the alpha300 AFM and SNOM series.www.witec.de
ADVERTISERS’ INDE X
The index is provided as a service and, while every effort is made to ensure its accuracy, Optics & Laser Europe accepts no liability for error.
Advanced Optical Technology www.aotlasers.com 9B&W Tek Inc www.bwtek.com 29CVI Technical Optics Ltd www.cvi-tol.co.uk OBCDiffraction International Ltd www.diffraction.com 31Docter Optics www.docteroptics.com 28ELCAN Optical Technologies www.elcan.com IBCElectro-Optical Products Corp www.eopc.com 22Femto Messtechnik GmbH www.femto.de 36Fisba Optik AG www.fi sba.com 29Gentec Electro-Optics Inc www.gentec-eo.com 14Hamamatsu Photonics UK Ltd www.hamamatsu.com 34HC Photonics Corporation Ltd www.hcphotonics.com 8High Q Laser Production GmbH www.highqlaser.com 15Keyence Deutschland GmbH www.keyence.de 18Klastech – Karpushko Laser Technologies GmbH www.klashtec.de 9Konica Minolta Sensing Europe B.V
www.konicaminolta-3d.com 25Lambert Instruments www.lambert-instruments.com 30Laser Components (UK) Ltd www.lasercomponents.co.uk 19Luminit www.luminitco.com 9Matrox Electronic Systems www.matrox.com 10Melles Griot – USA www.mellesgriot.com 4Multiwave Photonics www.multiwavephotonics.com 28NET New Electronic Technology GmbH www.net-gmbh.com 36Ocean Optics BV www.oceanoptics.com 13OctoMedia Ltd www.cancom.com 22Ophir Optronics Ltd www.ophiropt.com 11, IFCPacer International www.pacer.co.uk 12PCO AG www.pco.de 33Photon Lines Ltd www.photonlines.com 6Quantel www.quantel.fr 32Scitec Instruments Ltd www.scitec.uk.com 9Sill Optics GmbH & Co KG www.silloptics.de 35SPIE – USA www.spie.org 34StockerYale Ltd (IRL) www.corkopt.com 30Texas Instruments www.dlp.com 7Thorlabs GmbH www.thorlabs.com 33, 35, 37 XenICs nv www.xenics.com 26
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38 OLE • November 20 07 • o p t i c s .o r g /o l e
BACK CHATA focus on key competences helps
fi rms tackle Asian competition
Berliner Glas is a German company with a prestigious history. Formed in the 1950s as a glass trading company, the group has grown to 950 employees bringing in sales of 7120 m in 2006. Around two thirds of these sales come from classical photonic applications and optical technologies. This includes everything from compo-nents such as prisms and lenses right through to optical modules and systems that combine mechanics, optics and elec-tronics. It is this part of the business that the fi rm is actively trying to safeguard against Asian competition.
What areas of the photonics market are affected by Asian competition?The effects of Asian competition depend on the market segment that you look at. You can divide the photonics market into medical and life science; production tech-nology; measurement, inspection and sensors; information and communica-tion; and displays.
The most serious competition is when you look at the optical components and assem-blies that are found in the measurement, inspection and sensors market. This compe-tition is at the component level for medium to high volumes. However, Asian fi rms are now starting to move into combinations of mechanics and middle-class optics for medium to high volume applications.
When I talk about Asia, I exclude Japan. Japan is very similar to Europe. China and India are the main places where optics, optical components and modules are manufactured and are aggressive players. Korea is more into the fl at-panel market.
What strategies do you use to tackle Asian competition?We focus on our competences: integra-tion of optics, mechanics and electronics; production of key (sophisticated) optical components in Europe; and maintaining a professional purchasing department.
We start working with our customers as early as possible. This will be during the engineering and design phase, before the drawing is even on the table. More than 70% of our sales are linked to engineer-ing. The customer approaches us with an
idea; we discuss it and go through feasibil-ity, prototyping and pilot production. The earlier you start the more freedom you have to fi nd a solution.
The final touch makes the difference. Our Asian competitors can saw, grind and polish, but when it comes to the fi nal touch, such as a certain surface fl atness, the diffi -culties begin. Asian fi rms are catching up with conventional technologies but have yet to make substantial or high invest-ments. They think about selling 5000 lenses per month and using people with a lower level of optical knowledge. We have a different approach.
Where does Berliner Glas manufacture its products?We have three production sites for photon-ics: Berlin, Germany; Heerbrugg, Switzer-land; and Wuhan, China. We followed our customers to China otherwise they would have looked for another supplier locally.
We split our Wuhan site into two parts. The fi rst part is production where we buy the raw material like semifi nished prisms in China. We polish and sell these parts to other companies in Wuhan. They are not made for export. The second part of our Wuhan business is purchasing finished prisms or lenses that are easier to manufac-ture in China than in Germany. Before the parts are shipped back to Germany or Swit-zerland, they are inspected at our Wuhan site. We needed some measurement equip-ment there in order to be able to source from Asia. We don’t want to send lenses or optics from China to customers in Germany and fi nd out too late that they are not the specifi -cation we expect. We have started to chan-
nel all of our purchasing through Wuhan.We still manufacture key optical com-
ponents in our European facilities. These are components with demanding speci-fi cations or a complex optical module or system that requires hours of assembly. This is never high volume, approximately 500–1000 pieces per year.
What advice would you give on how to cope with Asian competition?Make sure as a European or US company that you are better in terms of reliability, fl exibility, speed and competence. If not, leave the market. You must move the bat-tlefi eld away from pricing to factors such as reliability if you face Asian competition. You will never win on pricing. Cost is a very diffi cult topic compared with Chinese facilities. It is as simple as that. Flexibility and speed is diffi cult to achieve for Chinese manufacturers if you talk about low vol-umes and high production levels. Reliabil-ity is a big challenge.
If you are making low- or middle-end products and your customer fi nds a Chi-nese company that already makes a prod-uct or something similar to yours, you will have another 6–9 months of orders and then it is very likely to be over.
It is also important to train your sales people. We train our sales people to rate the potential success of a product. We can-not invest in a product where low-order income is to be expected.
How will Asian competition advance in the next fi ve years?Asian competition will build up capacity for middle-class optical components. They will also move towards high quantities of assemblies and subsystems based on mid-dle-class components.
A lack of knowledge is holding the Asian competition back. Sophisticated technolo-gies such as magnetorheological fi nishing require high-end educated engineers, but I am sure that the Chinese competition will be there within 10 years. Nowadays, there is low consultation by Chinese fi rms. It is limited to “give me a drawing and I’ll tell you if I can make it or not”, and I think this will stay for the next 3–5 years.
Many fi rms are facing increasing competition from Asia, a problem that will not go away, and one that certainly cannot be ignored. OLE speaks to Andreas Nitze, CEO of Berliner Glas, about his company’s experiences.
Andreas Nitze, CEO of Berliner Glas, Germany.
Ber
liner
Gla
s
