Light & Laser News

In a test that has left naysayers (like, oh, say, me) eating their words, the Airborne Laser (ABL) not only fired successfully in flight but shot down a ballistic missile. The megawatt chemical laser spot-formed stress fractures on the missile, causing it to break apart. No word on the distance between aircraft and target, though, which is important — an aircraft can't shoot down a missile unless it is within range. An effective ABL program would require a number of the $1.5 billion planes to be kept constantly aloft over suspicious territory to have a reasonable chance of being in the right place at the right time to reach and destroy a missile. Concerns about practicality have led to dramatic budget cuts for the project, making the recent test something of a hollow victory.

Triad's 20W/40W encapsulated power supplies are available with 12 VDC, 24 VDC, and constant current outputs. All accept input from 90 VAC-264 VAC and are UL recognized, CE marked, and RoHS compliant. They are designed to fit standard electrical junction boxes for electrical installations including signage, architectural lighting, and LED fixtures. Custom designs are available upon request.

Multiwave Photonics is announces our new series of pulsed fiber laser systems. Highly engineered, the extend family of lasers now includes the MOPA-ID, MOPA-M and MOPA-PV systems. Each model is configured for ideal operation in specific applications such as ID card marking, material processing, and photovoltic scribing. Visit us here...

SPI is now introducing a 40 W version of its higher moded laser with increased average power and peak pulse power of >20 kW. It also provides unique pulse energy levels which exceed 1.25 mJ. Applications for this laser include black anneal marking, high-speed engraving, and 'large area' materials processing. Learn more...

LIA's 2nd Laser Additive Manufacturing Workshop (LAM) will bring industry specialists, executives, users, and researchers from around the world to show how cladding and rapid manufacturing can be applied effectively and affordably to today's manufacturing challenges.

Forget about waiting a year or two for time on a synchrotron. Someday soon, you'll be able to have a tabletop system capable of generating "laser-like" x-ray output, thanks to ultrafast lasers and nonlinear optics. Colorado researchers use high-harmonic generation with a mid-IR femtosecond laser to produce coherent, soft x-ray output. The team is currently working to develop a hard-x-ray version of the system. Want to know more? You'll find papers galore on their Web site.

As the laser's 50^th birthday celebrations begin, it's fitting to look at several recent laser-fueled applications. In recycling, a sorting robot uses laser-based sensors to separate six different plastics, including polyethelyne and polystyrene, which look the same to the human eye. In biotech, a flow cytometer leverages six different lasers to sort cells. And, finally, the laser package for projection televisions just got tinier and mightier with Sony's release of a three-color module that measures just 530 cc.

Silicon photonics took another step toward reality with the demonstration of a phosphorus-doped germanium (Ge) laser operating in the telecom band from 1590 to 1620 nm. Starting with a silicon substrate, researchers fabricated strained Ge structures with n-type doping. Elsewhere, IBM scientists unveiled a germanium avalanche photodiode that operates at a blistering 30 GHz. Nanostructures randomize the electric fields to cut amplification noise by 70%, allowing the devices to provide 10 dB of gain for a bias voltage of just 1.5 V.

Introducing a nitrogen vacancy in a diamond nanowire forms a room-temperature, color-center laser capable of emitting single photons, Harvard researchers have shown. The group used reactive-ion etching and electron-beam lithography to fabricate arrays of 200-nm-diameter, 2-mm-long columns. Because the color centers are closer to the surface than in bulk diamond, they are easier to excite and a larger number of photons can be captured.

Future Lighting Solutions' simpleLED® program has over 500 combinations of LUXEON® LED and optics configurations, enabling you to select the right light engine for your application, eliminating prototyping delays and accelerating time to market. All light engines are UL recognized and warrantied.

Learn more about simpleLED.

Are you familiar with the safety compliance requirements for electric luminaires? Register for UL University's upcoming workshops on UL 1598 Electric Luminaires and UL 153 Portable Electric Luminaires. Additional workshop topics include: CE Marking, Plastic Materials, and more.

Register before April 15^th and receive 15% off with discount code GBLL01310.

ace cameras meet the cost demands of analog camera users while offering the technological advantages of a digital camera.

The cameras provide a 29 x 29 mm footprint, Power over Ethernet and high-performance features.

The ace series includes camera models in monochrome and color with resolutions from VGA to two megapixels.

Axetris MEMS-based broadband Infrared (IR) Sources cover a wavelength range of 2-14 µm and stand out with efficient power consumption, long lifetime, fast modulation, and rugged design. The reflector versions optimize the optical power on the detector.

Useful in infrared spectroscopy detection using non-dispersive, photo-acoustic, or attenuated-total-reflection techniques.

Arrays of silicon microlenses promise to dramatically improve the performance of lab-on-a-chip devices. Each element of the reusable zone-plate array corresponds to a separate channel on the chip. When illuminated by a source, a zone plate excites a specific location in the channel below, capturing the signal produced. Because several thousand sample droplets flow through the channels each second, an array integrated with a massively parallel microfluidic device can process almost 200,000 droplets per second.

No, it's not sexy but it's something anyone who uses optics needs to know how to do, and it's trickier than it seems. Read this excellent tutorial to learn how to end up with a pristine surface instead of a scratched antireflection coating. And, if you find that helpful and want more information about optics, check out the company's brand new technical guides that include more detail on infrared imaging and the latest on going green.

Unless production ramps up dramatically, the year 2010 may see a shortage of LEDs, analysts warn. Driven by growth in the markets for solid-state lighting, back-lit LCD televisions, and portable devices, demand for the devices rose 11% from 2008 to 2009, to reach a total of 63 billion units. Meanwhile, current market capacity hovers at about 75 billion. Clearly, manufacturers need to ramp up or we're going to have troubles. View video.

Silicon nanowires with radial p-n junctions can capture sunlight more than 73 times better than crystalline silicon, say Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists. Each solar cell incorporates 36 of the nanowire arrays. Initial devices achieved 5% efficiency; by optimizing performance with techniques like anti-reflection coatings and surface passivation, the group expects to achieve efficiencies around 10%. Best of all, the aqueous chemistry technique used to produce the devices can be scaled to volume production.

IRD Glass provides precision slotted diode laser mirrors and custom quartz flashlamp reflector cavities with cutting edge thin film coatings and near-impossible configurations. IRD can provide you the parts everyone else has no-quoted or failed at in production. Bring us your problem, and let IRD Glass provide you the solution.

The REA PowerPULSE™ DPSS laser gain module is ideally suited for applications that require up to 4 Joules of energy per pulse. It has an amplified small signal gain >700. Diode lifetime exceeds 20 billion shots.

Tower's line of Achromatic Waveplates has been expanded to include 610 nm to 850 nm in 1/2 or 1/4 wave retardation. The retardation tolerance is Lambda/100 across the range. These air spaced waveplates are supplied in a 1 in. mounting ring with a 11.5 mm aperture. See all Tower precision optics here.

The PICOLED™ series provides impressive brightness in a package only 0.2 mm thick. In addition, high reliability is ensured with no brightness degradation after 10,000 hours. Their size makes the LEDs in this series ideal for use in high-resolution, high-density matrix applications that require a high degree of expressiveness. Product announcement.

Organic light-emitting diode technology holds enormous potential, but will it get smothered by an inferior technology with more market share, the same way VHS killed Betamax? Find out what one expert thinks about the market forces at work, the picture going forward, and the things the OLED sector needs to do to recover.

Consider yourself forewarned if you don't like stories about bugs or parasites. But, this actually has a cool outcome. Scientists at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, have developed a new technique that uses gold nanoparticles and lasers to trap and kill the parasite that spreads the common pet-borne disease toxoplasmosis. Icky, yes, but good science isn't always pretty.

Should the DoD Revive the Airborne Laser?

Technology aside, could even a dozen ABL aircraft cover all the airspace necessary to protect the United States from ICBMs? Is the Department of Defense right to be pulling the plug?