Light & Laser technology news

AVX Corporation's 9276 and 917X series discrete wire-to-board connectors simplify installation and provide quick and reliable termination in sleek packages. These connectors are deal for a broad range of industrial and commercial markets, and are applicable to SSL projects. Wire-to-board connectors are available for purchase on Digi-Key's global Web sites.

Avago Technologies' family of SMT PLCC-2 LED indicators is packaged in the industry standard PLCC-2 package. These SMT PLCC-2 LED indicators exhibit high reliability, high performance, and are designed to work under a wide range of environmental conditions. For more information.

When you need fast and convenient access to technical specifications, availability, pricing, and online ordering for over 4,800 off-the-shelf photonics solutions, visit the all new Qioptiq Q-Shop for quick and easy access to premium optics, precision optomechanics and innovative photonic instrumentation. e-mail photonics@qioptiq.com for more information.

Tower's 38.1 mm and 50.8 mm diameter, zero order, air spaced waveplates offer large apertures for users with the requirements for new applications where beam size and/or beam position moves over larger distances. These catalog waveplates are available for 355, 532, 632.8, 800, and 1064nm, in either 1/4 or 1/2 wave retardation.

Your results are only as good as your tools. If you're using a laser, that makes beam characterization essential. Monitoring your output can reveal beam misalignments that can compromise your results. Don't let this happen to you. Brush up on your definitions, then review these tutorials on beam profiling and beam quality.

An optical atomic clock is only as good as the laser it's based on. Stringent requirements for thermal and vibrational stability typically relegate systems to temperature-controlled rooms in the basement. That might be fine for time standards, but field applications like geodesy need a more flexible solution. Using cavity locking and feed-forward frequency correction, National Institute of Standards and Technology physicists have developed an IR fiber laser so stable that even while riding in a slowly moving minivan, it can achieve acceleration sensitivities on the order of 10^-12/g. Bandwidth ranges from 1.7(1) Hz FWHM while the vehicle is idling to 100 Hz FWHM while the vehicle is moving at 1 m/s (0.1 g acceleration).

With the help of laser heating and uber-high pressures, Lawrence Livermore National Labs scientists have converted amorphous carbon aerogels into diamond aerogels that could provide the antireflection coatings of the future. The group first filled voids in the precursor with neon to maintain the structure, then placed the material between a pair of opposing diamonds. Using this "anvil," they applied pressures as high as 20.3 GPa while heating the material to more than 1225 C. The conditions reordered the carbon into a diamond-like material.

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPP), formed at the interface between a dielectric and a metallic layer, hold out the prospect of optical transmission that beats the diffraction limit. That's appealing for chip-level optical interconnects but the metal generates unacceptably high losses. By switching from a metal-dielectric structure to a metal-oxide-semiconductor structure, Berkeley researchers have forced the optical signal from the high-loss metal to the low-loss oxide layer. The move increased propagation distances to 20 times the vacuum wavelength for visible light, and twice that for near-IR wavelengths. The approach shows promise for modulators, switches, and even nanoscale lasers. Best of all, it's compatible with CMOS processing.

Custom made LED emission rings and arrays are used for illumination within medical instrumentation, machine vision, precision scanning, and UV sterilization modules. Marktech Optoelectronics specializes in high reliability, high-quality LED light rings throughout the UV, Visible, and IR spectrums.

Solar Light Company manufactures a full range of over 135 standard, custom, and OEM NIST traceable Sensors and Meters to meet your visible and IR light, UVA, UVB, and UV germicidal measurement needs. They are available in various configurations for research, process, and industrial applications.

Tired of using your smart phone to control your optical tweezers? Switch to the new game in town: 3D video. An app written by a Georgia Tech researcher controls the iPhone's screen to illuminate the subject from four different directions, then capture an image with the built-in camera. Image processing converts this data pixel-by-pixel into a 3D image or video. An upgraded version can even export to other software.

Recent advances have brought us one step closer to roll-up TVs and computers you fold up and put in your pocket. Using a fabricate-and-stack approach, Samsung researchers have produced a 4 in. diagonal, RGB quantum-dot display. The group grew arrays of each color separately, then used a solvent-free technique to transfer them to a flexible plastic substrate. The approach resulted in 320 x 240 pixel devices with better packing density than designs sporting all three colors on the same layer. Meanwhile, a Samsung active matrix organic-light-emitting-diode (AMOLED) display survived 100,000 folding cycles with no crease and just a 6% drop in brightness.

By topping a silicon waveguide with a layer of graphene, Berkeley engineers have produced a high-speed optical modulator just 25 µm² in size. Applying a voltage alters the Fermi level of graphene, which controls its transparency. The group added gold and platinum contacts to the graphene layer to switch it between transmissive and absorbtive states. The devices offer speeds 10 times as fast as existing modulators, and 100 times the bandwidth.

What goes faster by going slower? The answer? Long-haul, 100 Gb/s data transmission. By leveraging dual-polarization quadrature phase shift keying (DP-QPSK), systems can transmit at 100 Gb/s using a symbol rate of 28 baud — less than that of the simplest 40 Gb/s schemes. Coherent detection at the receiving end lowers the signal-quality requirements, making a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem feasible enough that commercial systems have already been deployed. Meanwhile, looking ahead to the day even 100 Gb/s isn't fast enough, a group has transmitted data at 26 Tb/s, courtesy of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM).

Master Bond EP30-2, a two component epoxy adhesive, sealant, and laminating compound, meets NASA low outgassing specifications. Optically clear, it cures at room temperature and has a low mixed viscosity. Bonds are durable and tough. EP30-2 is widely used in the electronic, electrical, computer, construction, metalworking, appliance, automotive, and chemical industries.

Call Kentek for laser safety curtains, barriers, Class 1 enclosures, optical table curbs, and related interlock equipment. Our innovative EverGuard® curtains combine flexible construction with metal barriers. All products meet applicable safety standards and ship promptly. Shop Laser Smart™. Shop Kentek.

Ultra Stable Hard-Mounted Hollow Retroreflector (USHM): self-compensating mirror totally insensitive to position and movement, extremely accurate, available in a variety of coatings and configurations. Its unique hard mount solidly connects the Retroreflector to the next assembly. The USHM is suited for critical military, aerospace, analytical, and other OEM uses.

The Conxrite® CNX 410 Series is a solderless LED interconnector that provides a simplified method of electrically connecting panel mounted LEDs to a power source. The interconnector provides various methods of LED connection to power source circuitry, further simplifying assembly procedures. From Visual Communications Company, Inc.