2013
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MR sequences are faster than ever before; basic protocols as easy to perform as those for the knee or spine. Combined with contrast, lung MR can produce results as accurate as those seen in the liver, according to Hans-Ulrich Kauczor at the University Hospital of Heidelberg. John Mugler, University of Virginia, had been stumping for the broader use of this technology since making the first hyperpolarized xenon images of the human lung in 1996. Mugler was at it again at SPIE Biomedical Optics and Medical Imaging last year, where during the keynote presentation he described the disadvantages of conventional lung MR and extolled the virtues of hyperpolarized MR.
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In late April, I visited the SPIE Defense, Security + Sensing show in Baltimore. This conference focuses on many market areas involving lasers -- for instance, night vision, range finding, targeting, and LIDAR.
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Sequestration, the automatic U.S. federal budget cuts that went into effect on March 1, was the dominant theme at SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS) 2013 in Baltimore last week, and its impact on the defense industry could be clearly seen and heard. With travel budgets slashed or eliminated altogether, many government employees couldn't make the annual pilgrimage to the event, even those from as close by as Washington, DC. At one workshop I attended, attendees never even had the opportunity to lay eyes on the moderator (from the Air Force Research Laboratory's Sensor Directorate) -- he did his part via teleconference from Ohio.
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People tell me they're getting sick of the term SWAP, which as we know all too well is short for size, weight, and power. The idea, of course, is little SWAP, not big SWAP -- for most things these days, that is. The desire for big things in small packages is front-and-center in the aerospace and defense electronics industry because of a growing and wide variety of applications involving unmanned vehicles, soldier systems, and the like. Evidence of the growing focus on SWAP is almost everywhere we look. Last week at the SPIE Defense Security + Sensing electro-optics show in Baltimore, for example, tiny size, light weight, and low power consumption were common themes.
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Arati Prabhakar, director of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), issued a strong call to arms in a keynote address opening last week's Defense Security and Sensing (DSS) symposium.
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The SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS) exhibition is a place where even the most hard-core tech geek can get lost amidst a sea of cutting-edge technologies being utilized in almost unthinkable ways.
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For sharp night vision, no one on the exhibition floor at SPIE's Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) show in Baltimore seemed to beat SiOnyx. The CIA-backed start-up company, at its first public show ever, ran two videos of a dark night in the Massachusetts woods.
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At SPIE DSS 2013 Xenics introduced the Xlin-1.7-3000, a line-scan detector in InGaAs technologythat offers over 3,000 pixels of resolution With high sensitivity in the SWIR range (0.9 to 1.7 µm) Xlin-1.7-3000 it is suited for the Proba-V (vegetation) satellite mission orbiting at an altitude of 880 km to reveal detailed long-term information on the changing crop and vegetation patterns of the planet and other vital parameters for preserving the biosphere.
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Earlier this week, LaserMotive, an independent company specializing in delivering electric power via lasers, unveiled InvisiTower, the world's first tethered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft system powered by laser over optical fiber. The new, portable system can power any multi-rotor helicopter indefinitely using laser power sent via fiber optic cable, enabling aircraft to stay in the air as long as power is available on the ground. The first public flight of an aircraft powered by the new system took place at the SPIE Defense, Security & Sensing (DS&S) tradeshow at the Baltimore Convention Center.
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The SPIE Defense Security & Sensing Show in Baltimore, which began on Monday and ends today, provided attendees with an exhibit hall full of new products and technologies. If you weren't at the show, here's some of what you missed.
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Tethered to a black fiber-optic cable supplying 70 W of laser power, a superlight micro helicopter, roughly the size of a medium pizza, flew using the power of light alone in demonstrations by Lasermotive at the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) exhibition in Baltimore.
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Tiny size, light weight, and low power consumption -- all with unmanned vehicles in mind -- were common themes this week at the SPIE Defense Security + Sensing electro-optics conference and trade show in Baltimore, as a wide variety of sensor integrators rolled out products for the newest generations of unmanned and soldier-worn technology.
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Demonstration of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) sources delivering tens of watts to wafers is a major milestone, and shipments will begin later this year. But serious challenges remain in reaching the performance needed for mass production of chips. The pace of EUV development accelerated in 2011, Wurm says, when ASML "stepped in and took more ownership of the source," investing more resources in EUV and agreeing to buy Cymer, a major source manufacturer. At the SPIE Advanced Lithography meeting (Feb. 24-28, 2013) in San Jose, Cymer reported a new EUV source that delivered average powers of 40-55 W at 13.5 nm for long periods and is offering a new generation of sources based on that technology.
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Potentially life-saving medical uses of thermal imagery are gaining interest in areas like breast cancer and diabetes, but it's slow going since the techniques are often considered alternative medicine, an advocate told the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) symposium in Baltimore.
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Internationally, many efforts are underway to support innovation and growth in photonics-which in turn promises to help society in so many fundamental ways. In Europe, Photonics21, with more than 1700 member companies and organizations, serves as a platform for establishing priorities in photonics research and innovation and is implementing a common European photonics strategy. In the US, many diverse groups are supporting efforts to create a National Photonics Initiative intended to increase collaboration among industry, government, and academia, and make photonics a national priority in areas that are critical for maintaining competitiveness and national security.
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Dr. Arati Prabhakar was the symposium-wide speaker at the plenary presentation last night at the SPIE Defense, Security + Sensing 2013. Dr. Prabhakar is currently the Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and not surprisingly, she has an impressive resume, having spent her career investing in world-class engineers and scientists to create new technologies and businesses.
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Several speakers described new approaches to saliva-based diagnosis of cancer and other serious diseases during a Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS 2013) technical session on Sensing Technologies for Global Health, Military Medicine and Environmental Monitoring.
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As the curtain went up at SPIE's Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) symposium, the focus was on a tiny satellite, with a sensor just over 16 inches long, set to launch in Hawaii this fall. It may enhance the field of geological study from space. Called the SUCHI, for Space Ultra Compact Hyperspectral Imager, it is a slimmed-down version of an earlier long-wave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral vehicle.
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During SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing in Baltimore, new results will be presented by Ondax demonstrating enhanced spectral measurements of explosives and hazardous materials.
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The photonic technology of thermal imaging was literally in the spotlight on the evening of April 19 as law enforcement officials used it to monitor and capture a Boston Marathon bombing suspect. "Raman spectroscopy is being used by both military and civilian agencies to identify bulk chemicals," said Christopher Carter, program manager at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab. "Carter will chair sessions on advances in spectroscopic chemical detection at the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) conference next week in Baltimore. His sessions are part of the conference on Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives (CBRNE) Sensing.
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In February, the Canadian government launched two satellites with a dual mission: to detect and track space objects while contributing to the country's continued support of 'space situational awareness' activities. Both satellites carry optical payloads designed to survey the sky from orbit looking for objects of interest, from surveillance of so-called "space junk" and other satellites to detecting and tracking near-Earth asteroids such as the bus-sized lump of rock that slammed into Russia the same month. While the majority of the world's 1,000 operational satellites are large and multi-functional, NEOSSat is an example of a relatively new type of craft - a microsatellite. .Attendees at SPIE's Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) conference in Baltimore next week will have the chance to hear more about similar projects in a dedicated conference session.
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This winter, Canadian photonics companies headed west to establish new customer relationships, pursue new global market opportunities and showcase Canada's technology strengths on the international stage. Together with the Canadian Photonic Industry Consortium (CPIC), a delegation of almost 50 Canadian photonics companies attended Photonics West from February 5 to 7 in San Francisco, California.
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Holoxica, the Edinburgh, Scotland-based developer and supplier of 3D holographic solutions, has announced the availability of a new interactive holographic 3D display, which it is calling a "second generation" prototype. The design is inspired by head-up displays, based on free-space optics with images floating in mid-air that can change in real-time. A paper from Holoxica describing this HUD-style display was presented by the company's CEO Javid Khan at the SPIE Photonics West conference in February, and it was published this week in the conference proceedings.
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The three greatest assets the U.S. wields in the world's high-tech economy are our world-leading research universities, the commercialisation engine of the free market, and a government who supports basic science. Today's political landscape has, however, made the future of federal investments in research and development unpredictable. Intelligently aligning these assets is now essential with competition around the world growing more innovative every day. This alignment in the optics and photonics community is the National Photonics Initiative (NPI) -- an answer to the primary recommendation in the recent Essential Technologies report by the National Academy of Sciences.The NPI advisory committee consists of member and staff representatives from five professional societies including SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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The preparatory work for the newly developed dynamic LED positive list achieved recognition at the annual SPIE Photonic West conference in January. The project for development of the positive list for LED lightning has been funded by the Danish Energy Association's ELFORSK programme.
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SPIE Advanced Lithography concluded a few weeks ago. I was able to obtain some interesting perspective (albeit remotely) on EUV events thanks to first person accounts, daily news and video updates on the SPIE web site and from other SEMI industry news media. My instinct to publish blog commentary immediately after the SPIE conference proceedings was throttled by additional background research in which I rediscovered recent, relevant historic data preceding and supplementing this years SPIE Advanced Lithography event.
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Scatterometry is the favored approach to monitor complex 3D nano-structures in production. At SPIE Advanced Lithography, KLA introduced a new generation of their scatterometry metrology system. The new system expands the number of different measurements; know internally as multi-multi-multi.
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At SPIE Advanced Lithography, Cymer announced some serious progress in EUV source development, one of several highlights. The latest results provided 40W of power in runs over 8 hours that mimicked full productions conditions including dose control. As far as I can tell, 40w translates to around 30 - 300 mm wafers an hour.
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The market-leading fiber laser company IPG Photonics has signaled the growing importance of short-wavelength sources with the acquisition of California-based Mobius Photonics. The deal follows recent moves by rival firms Coherent and Newport to enter the industrial UV laser space. At the SPIE Photonics West trade show in San Francisco last month, Newport's Spectra-Physics division launched its "Quasar" UV laser, Coherent released its "AVIA 355-33" Q-switched solid-state source for micromachining, and Mobius launched its "G2" fiber laser.In a technical conference session at Photonics West, IPG's CFO Tim Mammen had highlighted the growing importance of the UV and green wavelengths for fiber lasers.
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I have long suspected that the annual Laser Market Review and Forecast underestimates the total laser market simply due to the fact that it is difficult to get actual production statistics from domestic laser companies in China. The presentation from Bo Gu at our Lasers and Photonics Marketplace Seminar during SPIE Photonics West confirmed my opinion.
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The development of lens-free biomedical imaging technology continues apace, spurred on jointly by breakthroughs in the optical technology involved and the ever-wider availability of the perfect hand-held devices to exploit it. Aydogan Ozcan of the University of California, Los Angeles, whose research group has been heavily involved in pushing the technology forward, recently demonstrated an on-chip microscopy technique able to detect individual particles below 100 nm in size across an field-of-view of 20.5 square millimeters.This is an improvement of more than two orders of magnitude compared to other nanoimaging techniques, according to the team. Speaking at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco, Ozcan explained the rationale behind the BioGames platform, described as a new paradigm for remote medical image diagnosis of malaria.
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The University of the West Indies (UWI) has rebranded and restructured its three departments of Science in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad as it positions to commercialise its R&D creations. The university hopes to leverage its innovations into money-making ventures that will, in turn, provide a new pool of resources for continuous research and development of saleable applications. UWI Mona was among 25 organisations worldwide to recently receive a grant from SPIE to establish an optics curriculum and to introduce the field to high school, pre-university and undergraduate students.
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Trumpf has officially opened its new solid-state laser development center in southern Germany, following a €13.5 million investment. Trumpf says that an addition to its shipping unit is now at planning stage. The company's various solid-state lasers, which include disk sources, are used in a wide variety of applications from semiconductor manufacturing to automobile production. At the recent SPIE Photonics West event, Trumpf showed off the latest model in its "TruDisk" series of lasers, which delivers 6 kW from a single disk and is said to cut operating costs by as much as one-fifth compared with other lasers.
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I was in San Jose last week at SPIE Advanced Lithography 2013 attending the 2013 Advanced Lithography Exhibition, hoping to catch whatever was being said about 3D IC applications by exhibition vendors who were otherwise advertising such technologies as immersion, double patterning, e-beam, EUV, optical/laser, and RET lithography (naturally), materials and chemicals, resist materials and processing, and nano-imprint systems for IC and chip fabrication.
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It was one of the main themes at this year's SPIE Litho conference: what are the alternatives to extreme UV lithography?
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Lots to talk about from SPIE Advance Lithography Conference this year; EUV power, multi-beam systems, double patterning, and imprint. I thought I would pick up some highlights here, and then come back and talk about them in detail over the next few weeks.
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BioOptics World editor-in-chief Barbara Goode speaks with Wilhelm Kaenders, president of Toptica Photonics, who gave a talk during SPIE Photonics West at the 2013 Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar on the emerging market of supercontinuum lasers.
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It is an absolutely daunting challenge to attend a trade show like SPIE Photonics West 2013 and expect to come back to the office with a "comprehensive" view of what is new and exciting in the photonics industry. Truly, the show is awesome for its industry and networking events as well as the demonstration-packed exhibit, but I always feel like I've missed a lot. As an editor for Laser Focus World, that is not a good thing! So thank goodness for the three-year-old SPIE Startup Challenge! Wow, what an awesome way to discover ten of the top photonics startup companies in our industry--with truly "high tech" innovations--through their rapid-fire series of presentations to a distinguished panel of photonics industry investors and technology experts.
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Continuing to support the vision and leadership of Governor Andrew Cuomo through which New York is being transformed into the worldwide epicenter for nanotechnology, the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) announced today that pioneering scientific research conducted at CNSE's Albany NanoTech Cospimplex has contributed to nearly 50 technical papers being presented at the world's preeminent lithography conference, SPIE Advanced Lithography.
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Ongoing oversupply in the LED market will see sapphire wafer vendor Rubicon Technology's sales cut in half in the current quarter, although the US-headquartered company is hopeful of a recovery prompted by solid-state lighting applications later this year. Outside of the slack LED market, Rubicon also sells sapphire material into optics applications and showed off a 12-inch optical window based on the material at the recent SPIE Photonics West exhibition, as well as a huge 85 kg boule of raw sapphire.
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There were 3 different applications for pyramid patterns this year at Photonics West in San Francisco; improved LED's, improved absorbers and single quantum dot devices. This not the first time the ancients have come to the rescue of nano-technology, a couple of years ago we had nano-menhirs.
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Nanoscribe, the Karlsruhe, Germany, spin-out company that is developing equipment for production of nano-scale polymer components, revealed a quantum leap in the technology at the BiOS and Photonics West exhibition in California last week.
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Waguih Ishak, VP and director of the Corning West Technology Center in Palo Alto, California, said at the SPIE Photonics West event last week that the company's new flexible optical cables -- launched at the recent Consumer Electronics Show and set for a commercial roll-out in the current quarter -- will revolutionize how glass fibers function with consumer devices.
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The industry plans to use 193nm light at the 20nm, 14nm, and 10nm nodes. Amazing, no? There is no magic wand; scientists have been hard at work developing computational lithography techniques that can pull one more rabbit out of the optical lithography hat. Now, if you are prepared to have your mind blown by new computational lithography techniques, you can sign up for the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference. There is so much going on with computational lithography that I couldn't start to cover it all here.
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In August, the National Research Council of the National Academies released its new report, "Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation," which updates its 1998 "Harnessing Light" study. It looks at the state of optics, photonics, and optical engineering in the United States, prioritizes research grand-challenge questions to fill technological gaps, and recommends actions to support global leadership in photonics-driven industry, and calls for a National Photonics Initiative. "SPIE, OSA, the American Physical Society, the Laser Institute of America, and the IEEE Photonics Society are working together on the initiative, and we're trying to foster increased collaboration and coordination among industry, government, and academia to optimize photonics in the U.S.," said Eugene Arthurs, SPIE CEO. There will be a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 28 to finalize some of the recommendations of the initiative.
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There were mixed views on the future of photonics at the panel discussion held at Photonics West. Defence was 'tough', but not 'dead', China was 'difficult', and 2012 was a record year for mergers and acquisitions within the industry.
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With the economy in recovery and many optics and photonics companies reporting growth in 2012, an attendee at the "Executive Perspectives on the World of Optics and Photonics" event on Wednesday asked the panel if additional jobs are coming to the optics industry. Current hiring strategies differ when it comes to manufacturing.
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The SPIE Photonics West Exhibition opened on Tuesday, featuring more than 1,200 companies showcasing the industry's latest innovations.
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Every year, Laser Focus World and BioOptics World editors write about many of the latest biophotonic advances including optogenetics, photoacoustics, and multi-modality or hybrid imaging. While many of these disciplines are less than a decade old, the well-attended Saturday night BiOS Hot Topics session at SPIE Photonics West highlighted how these technologies are already making tremendous inroads into clinical applications--targeting neural diseases, cancer, and making surgery less invasive.
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Engineers in California have made an important advance in a technique that could help chipmakers create denser and cheaper integrated circuits. It might also extend the life of the traditional lithography process. With a method called directed self-assembly, the engineers were able to pattern contact holes for transistors in memory and logic circuits. At the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium in San Jose, Calif., this month, a group led by H.-S. Philip Wong, an electrical engineering professor at Stanford University, will show that their template technique can pattern holes for a broad range of logic circuits, including adders and flip-flops, using a standard library of circuit components.
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This week, the European Commission announced its selection of the development of graphene as one of two "flasgship" projects that are set to receive unprecedented research funding through its "Future and Emerging Technologies" competition. Along with the "human brain" initiative, and with not insignificant contributions required from other funding partners including industry, graphene research across the continent is set to receive up to one billion euros over the course of the next decade.The potential applications of graphene run far wider than the various fields of optics and optoelectronics, and the material has quickly become a topic of huge interest for photonics researchers. Without directly referencing the high-profile graphene project, photonics leaders from SPIE and other organizations have added their voices to those calling for protection of Horizon 2020 funding.
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At a time when many industries are plagued by uncertainty or are in decline, biomedical optics and biophotonics are thriving. A 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. predicts that the global market for biophotonics will exceed $99 billion by 2018. Based on the opinions of experts I recently interviewed and the level of participation expected at SPIE BiOS 2013, such projections appear realistic.
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Every year, as I'm flying the red eye home and reflecting on SPIE Photonics West, one thought always comes to mind -- I wish there had been more time to meet more attendees, talk with more companies, shoot more videos, write more articles, and attend more presentations, sessions, and industry events. So, if you are going to be one of the event's more than 20,000 attendees this year, here are three things you don't want to miss.
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The international business convention Invest in Photonics 2012 -- dedicated to investments in the photonics industry -- recently attracted more than 150 participants to a meeting in Bordeaux of investors and project developers. The photonics market is estimated at € 300 billion, and is expected to reach € 480 billion by 2015, according to figures from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a popular imaging modality for obtaining three-dimensional, micrometer-resolution pictures of structures that lie beneath the surface of, for example, the human eye or silicon wafers used in the computer industry. The technique could now become even more powerful, thanks to work led by Hon Luen Seck from the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology at A*STAR. The team has found a way to eliminate one of the main noise sources that otherwise blur these images. The paper is published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics.
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2012
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Organizers of Invest in Photonics 2012, a two-day international convention on photonics venture capital (VC) investment, said that participation at last month's event increased "despite a tough investment decade in photonics". The gathering in Bordeaux, France (host of the Laser Megajoule and a region recognized as a center for photonics) attracted a mix of industry leaders, investors, photonics specialists, market analysts and trade representatives from across Europe, the USA and Asia. The photonics market is estimated to be worth €300bn ($395bn) and is expected to reach €480bn ($632bn) by 2015, according to SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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With a global market that experts predict could grow 8 to 10 percent annually to reach €480 billion by 2015, photonics is on the rise -- and the recent Invest in Photonics convention revealed just where venture capitalists and industry leaders should focus their attention: zetabyte data communications, diagnostic health care, competitive manufacturing and sustainable clean energy. Analysts and speakers from companies around the world focused on three fast-growth markets: consumer goods, cleantech and health care, as well as the influence of Asia. "Photonics is ubiquitous, yet often invisible," noted Steve Anderson of SPIE in his opening address.
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Photonics may not be a household word but it is everywhere. Thought of as "light technologies," photonics is a part of our daily lives from the time we switch on a light to drive a car with a head up display to go to the doctor for a CT scan. Despite the tough economic times that the world has experienced in the past few years the market for light technologies is looking bright. According to SPIE, the global photonics market is estimated at 395bn USD and is expected to reach 632bn USD by 2015. The market in Europe is estimated at 60bn EUR.
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A carbon-nanotube-coated lens that converts light to sound can focus high-pressure sound waves to finer points than ever before. The University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed the new therapeutic ultrasound approach say it could lead to an invisible knife for noninvasive surgery. The researchers will present the work at the SPIE Photonics West meeting in San Francisco.
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It was the end of the semiconductor roadmap for 193-nanometer lithography -- the next generation would have to go to 157-nanometer light. Jim Blatchford, Texas Instrument's manager of front-end processing, had just finished negotiating for a leading edge 157-nanometer photolithography system, but he was still worried about the unproven technology, so he went to an SPIE session on 157-nanometer lithography.
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The Lighting Research Center’s 25th Anniversary Celebration in March 2013 is expected "to be a landmark event for lighting,” said Russ Leslie, LRC cofounder and associate director. The topic for the 25th anniversary celebration is the value of lighting, also the subject of a new book written by LRC Director Mark Rea to commemorate the milestone. Dedicated to the notion that society undervalues light, largely because we do not properly measure its benefits, Value Metrics for Better Lighting brings together a wide range of research to illustrate how the effective use of light can benefit society and the environment. Published by SPIE, the book is due for release January 2013.
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Photonics, as a discussion subject, has been in the shadows for a long time. A quick look at Google Trends, which scans for news headlines, shows that there are five times more search queries for "cloud computing" than "photonics". Yet, just like cloud computing, it is as ubiquitous (but invisible) and essential to our day-to-day lifestyle. On Wednesday and Thursday, a biennial event called Invest in Photonics provided a peek at what's happening in photonics across Europe and the world, not only from the technology perspective but also crucially from the venture capitalists, well-known tech companies and the European Commission. Speakers included Stephen Anderson, industry and market analyst for SPIE.
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A new venture capital company with a specific focus on "quantum" technologies including photonics claims to have raised $30 million in investment funds. The Boston-based group, called Quantum Wave Fund (Qwave), says it has the potential to raise as much as $100 million, and intends to fund start-up companies working on new kinds of materials and technologies. The company has a strong Russian influence, having been set up by managing partner Serguei Kouzmine, venture partner Serguei Beloussov and scientific advisory board member Vladimir Shalaev, and also has an address in Moscow. In a plenary talk at the SPIE Optics + Photonics conference held in San Diego in August 2012, Shalaev highlighted the potential application of nanophotonics in future modulator, nanoantenna and nanolaser components.
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SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, is among dozens of science and engineering institutions to sign a letter calling for US politicians to protect investment in research amid the looming "fiscal cliff".
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Using a Calmar Cazadero femtosecond laser, researchers in the Biomedical Optics Department of Laser Zentrum Hannover (LZH) have completed research on how cavitation bubbles impact the laser surgical process. Further research details will be presented at SPIE Photonics West 2013.
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"We're expecting around 1,200 exhibiting companies at SPIE Photonics West again this year [1,214 in 2012], and more than 200 at the BiOS Expo [217 in 2012]," says Marilyn Gorsuch, SPIE Photonics West event manager. "The halls are filling fast, and late-booking companies who want to be a part of the Photonics West Exhibition will be facing the prospect of a waiting list." Clearly, SPIE Photonics West continues to be the most popular and well-attended photonics trade show in the United States.
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Sian Harris explores how engineers monitor new developments in technology, and what research information sources are available. Among the options, conference proceedings are highly-regarded sources of information on the latest developments in engineering. "They provide very current research progress reports and results in active and emerging technologies, much of which can’t yet be, or may never be, found in the journals literature," according to SPIE Publications Director Eric Pepper.
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Lockheed Martin says that its 10 kW portable fiber laser weapon has shot down small-caliber rocket targets in recent tests -- the latest demonstration to highlight the rapid progress being made in the emerging field. News of Lockheed's successful demonstration comes shortly after the German division of the missile systems specialist MBDA said that its 40 kW system -- also based on fiber lasers -- had also shot down artillery targets in simulated flight. A wide range of laser sources are being worked on, and at SPIE's Security + Defence conference held in Edinburgh, UK, this September, it was clear that progress is being made.
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With more than 1,220 exhibitors, North America's most important photonics event will open its doors this year at the beginning of February. Organizer SPIE expects about 20,000 attendees from around the world at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Photonics West 2013 coincides with five international symposia; more than 4,400 presentations have been submitted for the conferences BiOS, LASE, OPTO, MOEMS-MEMS and Green Photonics: Industry meets Science. The same applies to the German Pavilion -- here one finds a synergy of Germany's major players in the photonics industry as well as renowned research institutes.
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When you're designing a geometrically complex structure like a high-k metal gate, FinFET, or vertical DRAM, you will probably use SEM/TEM cross-sectional imaging to work out the bugs. Maybe even a touch of AFM. However, in production, optical scatterometry-based technology is used, chosen for its speed, non-destructive nature and ability to monitor the 3D shape of a feature. This group of metrology techniques is commonly called OCD (Optical Critical Dimension) or SCD (Scatterometry Critical Dimension). Sometimes more than one parametric change (e.g. trench depth and top CD) results in about the same change in the spectrum. The SCD community calls this phenomenon "parametric correlation." A similar issue was reported by GLOBALFOUNDRIES and IBM, in a paper published in a recent SPIE Proceedings on Advanced Lithography.
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Budding photonics entrepreneurs: get your elevator pitches ready! Next year's Photonics West conference and exhibition in San Francisco will host an expanded startup challenge, with $10,000 on offer to the eventual winner of the competition.
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More than 20% of physical sciences journals offer a form of open access. New rules in Europe may increase that number. In the US, the European OA initiatives are not seen as problematic, even by societies that depend on revenues from publishing. "This move is intrinsically in concert with our long-standing directions," says SPIE CEO Eugene Arthurs. "The proposals acknowledge that there are both value and cost involved in the publisher's role of developing, feeding, and maintaining peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings." The society is launching a new gold OA program for all its journals in January 2013.
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Putting a new twist on an old idea, an inventor has designed a telescope instrument that could dramatically boost the ability of astronomers to find objects in space, even alien worlds. It's called a Dittoscope, and while it sounds like a piece of copying technology from the 1970s, it's part of a decade-long effort by tinkerer and artist Tom Ditto. Ditto wrote up his first designs in 2002 and went to the annual SPIE Optics and Photonics conference.
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A host of industry leaders will help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar on Monday, February 4, during SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco. Keynote speaker is Valentin Gapontsev, chairman and CEO of IPG Photonics, who will discuss developments in and opportunities for the fastest growing laser segment--fiber lasers.
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Researchers at EPFL and Harvard Medical School have joined forces to develop an imaging technique that can provide in situ observations of the internal ear, an area which has until now been inaccessible. This groundbreaking work may finally make it possible to understand the mechanisms underlying hearing loss. Early results from testing on mice have been presented recently at the Bertarelli Symposium at EPFL, and will also appear in the online and print version of the Journal Of Biomedical Optics.
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Leading scientists and policy makers participated in a briefing on Capitol Hill on September 12, asking the government to help improve the organization of research in optics and photonics. The briefing was based on a recent report, titled "Optics and Photonics: Essential Technologies for our Nation," that calls for a national strategic plan to focus public and private research in the field. Presenters said that other parts of the world have developed such a strategic plan for their photonics industries. Taiwan, China and Germany have all invested significantly in research for new optics and photonics technology. "In the E.U. there is a very strong and sustained focus on optics and photonics," said Eugene Arthurs, CEO of SPIE.
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History and iconic Scottish ancient buildings have been an excellent host to this year's Remote Sensing and Security+Defence SPIE conference, which was combined into one event. In my opinion the idea of combining the two fields came as a natural fit.
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The Joint High-Power Solid-State Laser (JHPSSL) system developed by Northrop Grumman is to be tested by the US Army within the next two weeks, in a further sign that high-energy lasers are maturing as a future weapons technology. And that future may arrive sooner than may realize, Mark Neice, director of the Albuquerque-based High-Energy Laser Joint Technology Office (HEL-JTO), told delegates at SPIE Europe's Defence + Security symposium in Edinburgh.
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Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is late for the 10nm node and could possibly miss the window for that insertion point, according to a panel discussion at last week's SPIE/BACUS Photomask Technology conference in Monterey, California.
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Charles Townes, 1964 Nobel Laureate for his part in the pioneering research that led to the development of the laser, has picked up further recognition for his work as a winner of the very first "Golden Goose" awards. Set up to highlight the value of state-funded basic research in the U.S., the new awards represent a bipartisan political effort to educate both Congress and the general public about the human and economic benefits of such work. Coincidentally, representatives of the U.S. photonics community including SPIE were in Washington the day before the Golden Goose Awards ceremony, to state their case for funding a public-private national photonics initiative.
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Recommendations from a report released last month by the National Research Council of the National Academies were presented at the annual gathering of the Rochester Regional Photonics Cluster on Monday."Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation" was commissioned by a phalanx of research and development entities including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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The US firms ITT Exelis and Novasol are to complete development of a high-bandwidth, free-space laser communications system suitable for at-sea operations, under a new $7 million contract awarded by the US Navy. The system will be designed to transfer intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data between ships and from ship to shore, and is set to be used by the Navy and the US Marine Corps. ISR data is a fundamental part of military operations, but the proliferation of multi-spectral information generated via platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), satellites and high-altitude planes is becoming increasingly difficult for conventional communications systems to handle. The problem was highlighted by Regina Dugan, the former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), at last year's SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing show.
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Traditionally, Nd:YAG lasers have been used for detail work, and CO2 lasers have been used for big jobs. Both have proven track records, but diode lasers offer greater energy efficiency and substantially lower costs. In January at Photonics West ....
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Special seminar: Paul McManamon and Stephen Anderson presenting the recently released National Academies report "Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation" UCF/CREOL, Thursday, September 27.
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A new compression technology represents a significant improvement over today's standard, a new study found. The result could help pave the way for video with at least four times the pixels of today's 1080p standard. The study by researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne is detailed in a new paper for the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference in August.
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Photoacoustic techniques are currently a focus of interest for researchers in several fields, as shown by the attention paid to the topic in the keynote address at SPIE Photonics Europe which discussed its use in biomedical imaging.
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A new survey has found that the vast majority of people working in the global optics and photonics community have very high levels of job satisfaction. The analysis of more than 7500 responses represents the second such annual survey by the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), and this year it featured additional questions relating to the enjoyment and perceived significance of their roles.
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The falling cost of photovoltaic power will set up a "collision of titanic proportions" between energy utilities and the construction industry as grid parity is reached on a widespread basis. That's according to Billy Stanbery, founder and chief scientific officer of thin-film solar company HelioVolt, who made the comments during a panel session on the commercialization of novel photovoltaics technologies at SPIE's Optics + Photonics event in San Diego this week.
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On September 10, the Rochester Regional Photonics Cluster will bring optics industry experts Paul McManamon (co-chair, "Harnessing Light" update committee) and Steve Anderson (SPIE Industry and Market Analyst) to present research on the current state and opportunities in optical science in the United States. The event marks the release of the 2012 update to the 1998 "Harnessing Light" report, commissioned from the National Research Council by the U.S. Congress. Both the 1998 and 2012 report are based on research and insights from leading optics experts, and are key to defining economic policy in countries around the world.
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Gilbert Levin aims to appropriate the Mars Science Laboratory for his own ends. "Since NASA has disdained any interest in MSL looking for life, I'm taking over," he says. "I claim it." He is only half joking. If MSL's rover Curiosity finds carbon-based molecules in the Martian soil, Levin -- who led the "labelled release" experiment on NASA's 1976 Viking mission -- will demand that his refuted discovery of life on Mars is reinstated. Levin will make this call next week at the annual SPIE Optics and Photonics conference in San Diego, California.
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A number of attempts have been made to develop 3D volumetric display, some based on holography, others on looking into a big black box of a television-like device. This month, on SPIE.org, researcher Jason Geng (VP for the IEEE ITS Society) put forward his current theory for bringing volumetric display to fruition: projecting image patterns onto a screen that is a rotating double helix.
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The Annual SPIE/BACUS Symposium and co-located SPIE Photomask Technology exhibition, serving the worldwide photomask industry, will take place September 10-14, with the theme of successful integration and optimization of design, mask-making, and wafer fabrication in the deep sub-wavelength era. This year's keynote speaker is John Y. Chen, V.P. of technology and foundry management of Nvidia.
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During the SPIE Defense, Security + Sensing show in Baltimore, I had a very interesting conversation with John Marion, who is director of persistent surveillance at Logos Technologies, about surveillance imaging from aerostat balloons tethered to the ground to continuously observe what Marion said could be a "small-city size area."
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As mask feature sizes shrink well below the exposure wavelength, the topology of the mask-3D mask effects-begin to contribute significantly to distortions seen in specific features on the wafer. If these effects are not captured by the optical proximity correction (OPC) model, they can impact IC reliability and reduce yield. The solution would be full-chip rigorous electromagnetic field (EMF) modeling to find 3D mask effects, but this is not computationally feasible. The industry needs faster simulation methods to represent 3D mask effects adequately. Results on experiments with HHA and DDM models on a 28nm dark field mask from GLOBALFOUNDRIES were published at the Optical Microlithography conference at SPIE Advanced Lithography.
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Using nanoscale materials, researchers at the University of Georgia have developed a single-step method to rapidly and accurately detect viruses, bacteria and chemical contaminants. Their results appear in the early online edition of the journal Lab on a Chip and were recently presented at the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing conference.
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Visit the campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, on any cloudless afternoon, and you're likely to happen on an intriguing sight: a slender fellow bent over a contraption that looks like a cross between an 1890s camera and a bulky steamer trunk. That would be Sanjit Karmakar, a post-doctoral physics fellow who's using his "magic box" to take pictures by following the sun across the sky. One day, the pictures will be of objects thousands of miles away. Karmakar has made a splash at several professional conferences, including this year's SPIE convention, which was held at the Baltimore Convention Center in April. (SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, is dedicated to advancing light-based technologies.)
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As striking as it is, the illusion of depth now routinely offered by 3-D movies is a paltry facsimile of a true three-dimensional visual experience. In the real world, as you move around an object, your perspective on it changes. But in a movie theater showing a 3-D movie, everyone in the audience has the same, fixed perspective - and has to wear cumbersome glasses, to boot. "The paper reveals how you would greatly improve the realism, and image depth, and physical simplicity of 3-D display systems, particularly those that don't require you to wear glasses," says Gregg Favalora, a principal at the engineering consultancy Optics for Hire and co-chair of the SPIE Stereoscopic Displays and Applications Conference.
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An advanced telescope imaging system that started taking data last month is the first of its kind capable of spotting planets orbiting suns outside of our solar system. The collaborative set of high-tech instrumentation and software, called Project 1640, is now operating on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The project's first images demonstrating a new technique that creates extremely precise " dark holes" around stars of interest were presented at the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation meeting in Amsterdam.
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An advanced telescope imaging system that started taking data last month is the first of its kind capable of spotting planets orbiting suns outside of our solar system. The collaborative set of high-tech instrumentation and software, called Project 1640, is now operating on the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California after more than six years of development by researchers and engineers at the American Museum of Natural History, the California Institute of Technology, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The project's first images demonstrating a new technique that creates extremely precise "dark holes" around stars of interest were presented today at the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation meeting in Amsterdam by Ben R. Oppenheimer, an associate curator in the Museum's Department of Astrophysics and principal investigator for Project 1640.
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SRON, TNO, ASTRON and NOVA have joined forces to show their latest innovations and technologies in the field of instrumentation for astronomy. The venue is the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation technical exhibition, in Amsterdam RAI, 2 to 4 July.
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SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, invited MIRTHE to organize a workshop on speeding commercialization of mid-infrared (mid-IR) technologies for defense and security applications at this year's SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS) symposium, held in Baltimore 23-27April. Addressing a capacity audience, presenters offered diverse perspectives on the status of these technologies with respect to defense and security applications as well as strategies for progress towards increased commercial development and viability.
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A novel approach to laser guide star technology will be demonstrated at the forthcoming SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference in Amsterdam (1-6 July).
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I'm always complaining about publishers and the various messes they make ... so I think it's really important once again to mention SPIE and how they're good people. SPIE is for optics and photonics folks, btw, but they also have some more general interest defense stuff from time to time
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Human observations are playing an increasingly important role in gathering information related to a wide range of phenomena, including natural and man-made disasters, environmental changes over time, law enforcement, and efficient energy utilization. Jeff Rimland, a research technologist and doctoral candidate at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), is exploring how combining information from human observations ("soft data") and data from physical sensors ("hard data") could help military personnel and emergency responders gain a more comprehensive understanding of crisis situations. Rimland recently presented his work at the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing conference.
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The need for more and better imaging data will be the major driver behind a "healthy" market for remote sensing satellites over the next ten years, according to a new study by US-based Forecast International. At the recent SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS) conference and trade show in Baltimore, a team from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Italy described a new method that uses a wider range of spectral bands now available via the WorldView-2 satellite, part of the DigitalGlobe remote sensing constellation.
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The Optics and Photonics Education Directory is a joint public service effort by both SPIE and OSA, initiated by SPIE back in the mid 1980s.
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Mammography is the commonest imaging technique applied to the detection of breast cancer, employing low energy X-rays to scan the breast and spot abnormalities. But not all practitioners trust mammography to produce reliable results, believing that the technique produces unacceptable levels of both false-positives and false-negatives. It is also expensive, and sometimes unavailable on financial grounds to women who are particularly at risk from the disease. Thermal imaging using infrared scanning is an alternative, but despite several decades of occasional attention, the technique has failed to become widely adopted or trusted. A paper at SPIE DSS might show a way forward, and allow the technology gain more traction by improving the reliability of its results.
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Victoria University School of Biomedical and Health Sciences researcher Nicoleta Dragomir will spread $5,000 worth of biophotonics equipment between five lucky schools in regional Victoria, Australia. The equipment has been paid for through an education outreach grant from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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Pedro Cortes (Youngstown State University) has been awarded a summer faculty fellowship to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, an extension of work carried out during the summer of 2011 which resulted in a technical paper presented at the SPIE Smart Materials and Nondestructive Testing symposium in San Diego last March.
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In 2010, the European Commission designated photonics, or light technology, as one of the five key enabling technologies of the 21st century. The future of photonics is looking bright, certainly in Flanders. It is no coincidence that the largest conference on photonics in Europe took place in Brussels last month.
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A team at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the applied research arm of the Georgia Institute of Technology, has demonstrated for the first time a glass-matrix-based scintillator for gamma-ray spectroscopy which features potentially low fabrication cost, along with high chemical and mechanical stability. The work was presented at SPIE DSS 2012 in Baltimore, and opens the door to glass and glass-ceramic scintillators as promising candidates for gamma-ray detection, if the resolution can be further improved.
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Future technologies will enable patients to have access to the ultimate point-of-care devices - devices that they operate when and where they want. "While current devices have been designed for such purposes as detecting explosives or other chemicals obscured beneath cloth, paper or ceramics, increases in waveform acquisition speed and other performance developments could soon pave the way for biomedical testing and clinical trials," says Eugene Arthurs, CEO, SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics).
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Newport, the top-tier supplier of lasers and photonics equipment, has reduced its sales guidance for fiscal 2012, despite continued expectations of an upturn in demand in the second half of the year. CEO Robert Phillippy and CFO Chuck Cargile said that the cut in guidance was largely due to unexpectedly weak orders from the research sector in the first quarter of the year. Phillippy was in attendance at last week's SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing show in Baltimore, Maryland, and told investors that he drew two key take-aways from the event.
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To support the nation's nuclear-surveillance capabilities, researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing ways to enhance the radiation-detection devices used at ports, border crossings, airports and elsewhere. Details of the research were presented April 23, 2012 at the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing Conference held in Baltimore, MD.
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Last week in Baltimore, I joined more than 6,700 attendees - the most ever for a SPIE Defense, Security, And Sensing (DSS) conference and exhibition - to witness the latest advancements in optical science and engineering, including lasers, sensors, and imaging systems. SPIE DSS featured many interesting technologies, including trace element detection and various approaches to thermal imaging.
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Addressing a symposium on government funding at SPIE DSS 2012 in Baltimore, Fenner Milton of the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command made a point that was reiterated throughout the conference: that new IR technologies suited to the military's changing needs were required, and that companies developing them could find a welcome audience among those with funds for military research and development.
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To support the nation's nuclear-surveillance capabilities, researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing ways to enhance the radiation-detection devices used at ports, border crossings, airports and elsewhere. The aim is to create technologies that will increase the effectiveness and reliability of detectors in the field, while also reducing cost. The work is co-sponsored by the Domestic Nuclear Defense Office of the Department of Homeland Security and by the National Science Foundation. Details of the research were presented April 23, 2012 at the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing Conference held in Baltimore, MD.
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At the heart of digital photography is a chip called an image sensor that captures a map of the intensity of the light as it comes through the lens and converts it to an electronic signal. Using new computational methods and a tried-and-true chip-making process, Cornell scientists are taking this technology many steps further. The result could be the next generation of 3-D cameras, as well as the ability to focus photos after they're taken. Researcher Alyosha Molnar detailed the math behind the device at an international optics and photonics (SPIE) conference in January in San Francisco.
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SPIE hosted the world's largest unclassified conference for spying, defense, homeland security and surveillance technology. Many presentations in the Cyber Sensing track focused on surveillance of social media.
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Ultra-fast, robust, stable, and high precision: these are some of the characteristics of a new laser developed by an international research team. This ultra-small laser paves the way for a new generation of highly powerful, ultra-stable integrated lasers. SPIE Fellow Professor Roberto Morandotti and his team at the INRS University's Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre played a leading role in the design of this versatile laser that recently made the front page of the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications.
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Bruce Carlson, director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), gave a brief overview of NRO activities since the early 1960s, discussed current worldwide threats, and touched on the office's most recent budget submission requirements in his presentation at the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing plenary event on Monday.
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Photoacoustic imaging is starting to be used on human patients, and the technology could revolutionize medical imaging in clinical practice - from early-stage cancer detection, to neurology and label-free histology. That was the message from the Washington University in St Louis scientist and photoacoustic imaging pioneer Lihong Wang, in a keynote presentation at last week's SPIE Photonics Europe conference in Brussels, Belgium.
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The precise details of the European Commission's (EC's) "Horizon 2020" innovation platform may still be somewhat hazy, but one message is becoming clearer: those in the photonics sector who are hoping for EC funding from 2014 onwards will need to convince Brussels of the wealth- and job-creating potential of their ideas. Horizon 2020 was a major theme resonating through last week's SPIE Photonics Europe event in Brussels.
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In the plenary session of SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) 2012 in Baltimore, Bruce Carlson described the impact that advances in photonics technology have had on the work of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and discussed some of the future challenges that need to be addressed. The NRO is tasked with developing, acquiring, launching and maintaining the United States' overhead reconnaissance constellation, the network of orbiting satellites that contributes to the country's intelligence gathering and counter-terrorism efforts.
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Back-to-back conferences and exhibitions from SPIE are capturing the international reach of lasers, optics, and photonics, with SPIE Photonics Europe underway from April 15-19 in Brussels, and SPIE Defense, Security + Sensing in Baltimore April 23-27.
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Today sees the start of the four-day SPIE Photonics Europe conference hosted at the Square congress centre in Brussels. Scientists and entrepreneurs from 55 countries will meet to share their thoughts on photonics, the light-based technology which develops innovative applications for a diverse range of industries.
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The University of Arizona Student Optics Chapter hosts events throughout the year in order to build a bridge between the optics department and students, engage with the community and spark an interest in science as a whole. SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and the Optical Society of America provide primary funding for the chapter.
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At the heart of digital photography is a chip called an image sensor that captures a map of the intensity of the light as it comes through the lens and converts it to an electronic signal. Using new computational methods and a tried-and-true chip-making process, Cornell scientists are taking this technology many steps further. The result could be the next generation of 3-D cameras, as well as the ability to focus photos after they're taken. The math behind the device was shared at an international optics and photonics (SPIE) conference in January in San Francisco.
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Interviewer Jacqueline Hewett discusses with IDEX Corporation president Mike Cumbo the recent IDEX buy-out of CVI Melles-Griot, demographic megatrends, and the thoughts behind Cumbo's comment at Photonics West that "photonics is yet to have its silicon moment."
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A project with a radical approach to providing photonics technology expertise to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe is delivering positive results just one year into its term, and will ultimately prove influential in the forthcoming Horizon 2020 innovation program. That's according to Hugo Thienpont, who co-ordinates the ACTMOST (Access Centre to Micro-Optics Expertise, Services and Technologies) project. Thienpont, who is the honorary chairman at next month's Photonics Europe conference and show in Brussels, also feels that the success of the ACTMOST innovation model will prove to be an influential force within the framework of the forthcoming Horizon 2020 funding program of the European Commission.
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The IC industry needs to think differently about lithography, according to a panel at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference in San Jose, Calif. During the panel, lithography experts said that the market is ripe for an alternative next-generation lithography (NGL_ solution. Panelists represented the various alternative NGL technologies, such as direct self-assembly (DSA), maskless and nanoimprint.
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Ultrafast laser specialist Amplitude Systèmes and the Laboratoire Charles Fabry have expanded their close ties by establishing a new joint research laboratory that will support ten researchers working on high-performance sources. Amplitude is already at the forefront of that field, winning a Prism Award at this year's Photonics West trade show for its "Satsuma HE" ultrafast laser, which has been designed for industrial applications.
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Optech Consulting's Arnold Mayer says that the market jumped 28% in 2011, reaching a record high. The emergence of the fiber laser as a versatile technology platform that is suited to a wide variety of industrial applications was highlighted at the recent Photonics West 2012 trade show, where a number of laser companies were showing their intention to enter a market that is dominated by IPG Photonics.
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The high-resolution retinal display on Apple's new iPad will speed its adoption by physicians, predicts mobile medical app reviewer iMedicalApps. However, physicians should be cautious in their diagnostic use of iPads, says Mark McEntee, a researcher from the University of Sydney. McEntee presented his findings on the subject last month at the Medical Imaging conference organized by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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There is an HDR course planned for SPIE Defense, Security + Sensing in Baltimore next month. "High Dynamic Range Imaging: Sensors and Architectures" 4-hour course by Arnaud Darmont, Aphesa, "describes various sensor and pixel architectures to achieve high dynamic range imaging as well as software approaches to make high dynamic range images out of lower dynamic range sensors or image sets".
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A sixth-grader at Barrington Middle School is headed to regional competition after winning top honors at the Hillsborough County Science and Mathematical Fair last month. Yasmine Aziz impressed STEM Fair judges with her project, "The Color of Blood: How Does Color Affect Blood Pressure?", winning second place overall in the behavioral and health science category as well as an award from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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A sixth-grader at Barrington Middle School is headed to regional competition after winning top honors at the Hillsborough County Science and Mathematical Fair last month. Yasmine Aziz impressed STEM Fair judges with her project, "The Color of Blood: How Does Color Affect Blood Pressure?", winning second place overall in the behavioral and health science category as well as an award from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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During our Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar at SPIE Photonics West 2012, Milton Chang delivered the keynote talk on how to keep a photonics company growing. Essentially he talked about how to sustain the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship with which a company is founded.
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A committee at the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has recommended that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) becomes a major part of a drive to assess the feasibility of inertial fusion as a practical source of energy. In its current guise, NIF is designed to deliver single, intense bursts of laser energy to a deuterium-tritium target. At the recent Photonics West conference, NIF's director for laser fusion energy Mike Dunne said he was hopeful that fusion with energy gain (or "burn") would be demonstrated for the first time this year.
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Photonics Bretagne -- the newly established photonics research and industrial cluster -- has brought together 42 corporate and research member organizations across the northwest of France. The cluster, launched at the end of 2011 but gradually revealing itself to the global industry at Photonics West and at other European and upcoming Chinese industry events, has a strong commercial focus as well as substantial R&D resources.
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EBL has added 15 new publishers over the past few months, including a number of Swiss publishers. Please see full list below:
- SPIE the international society for optics and photonics
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At the 2012 SPIE Advanced Litho Conference the show floor was not very crowded, but the sessions were overflowing -- literally. In all the sessions I attended -- EUV, DUV, Self Assembly, multi-patterning, not only were the rooms standing room only with all the walls covered with attendees that did not fit in the allocated chairs, but most had crowds in the video relay overflow rooms.
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Most integrated circuits today are made by using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, but that could change, according to Burn Lin, Micropatterning Director at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd (TSMC) who was speaking at a SPIE Alternative Lithography Conference in San Jose last week. He says that as manufactures seek to make ever smaller and denser chips, EUV could lose its edge in allowing the industry to follow Moore's law. The answer he says, may turn out to be switching to electron beam (e-beam) lithography.
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optics.org has interviewed some key players in the field of silicon photonics to build up a picture of what is happening in this long-researched and gradually evolving "hot" area, from the laboratory through to the commercialization of devices. A notable figure in the silicon photonics community is Michael Hochberg, a founder of Luxtera who recently established the OpSIS -- Optoelectronic Systems Integration in Silicon -- a foundry service that provides developers with access to optoelectronic integrated circuits at a modest cost. Up until a few weeks before Photonics West 2012, Hochberg was professor at the University of Washington but he has decamped to the University of Delaware to push OpSIS forward.
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When it comes to making denser, smaller circuits, all eyes have been on extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). But it turns out that an alternative technology that uses electron beams to draw features might be just as productive and even cheaper. "I think Moore's law has pushed MEMS and electronics to the point where we can afford it," says Burn Lin, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. He's calculated that the cost of wafers made with e-beam lithography will be roughly one-third less than that of wafers made with EUV. Once the industry shifts from LP-record-sized 300-millimeter wafers to 450-mm wafers, the technology is likely to be even more affordable, says Lin, who prepared the numbers for a talk last week at SPIE Advanced Lithography.
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For more than a decade, there has been a plethora of research about a curious technology called directed self-assembly (DSA). Then, in 2007, with little or no fanfare, DSA landed on the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) roadmap as a potential solution for lithography at the 10nm node. Last year, DSA -- a patterning technology that makes use of block copolymers -- created a buzz at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference. And at last week's SPIE event, the technology stole the show and rocked the status quo, leaving experts to wonder if DSA can save the day and extend Moore's Law.
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Much of what makes SPIE's Photonics West such an excellent photonics venue is the extensive exhibition space and the hundreds of top-notch companies that exhibit their finest and newest products. While it is impossible to showcase all the new products, Laser Focus World attempted to capture the essence of some of the best showings on both the BiOS and Photonics West 2012 exhibit floors.
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Does the transition to 450mm wafers offer the ultimate opportunity to switch to maskless lithography (ML2)? That was the suggestion made by Burn Lin, senior director of micropatterning at TSMC in his keynote at SPIE Alternative Lithography.
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Tablet computers such as the iPad are becoming more and more popular, but new research from the University of Sydney means they could soon be used in hospitals as a tool for doctors to view medical imaging. Results of the University of Sydney study, presented this month at the SPIE Medical Imaging conference in San Diego, show tablet computers such as the iPad are as good as standard LCD computer screens when used as secondary display devices for viewing medical imaging.
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Next-generation maskless lithography -- or multi-beam e-beam -- is a great concept. But over the years, the progress for multi-beam has been slow and the technology is still not in production despite years of R&D. Now, even though the multi-beam e-beam vendors are behind the curve, the new champions of the technology have raised the bar on suppliers. At last week's SPIE Advanced Lithography event Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company surprised the industry and proposed the idea of having maskless for use in processing all critical layers in devices.
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The SPIE Advanced Lithography EUVL conference is usually held close to spring, but was pulled into week of Valentine's Day this year. Fittingly, 2012 may be the year of EUVL's early spring. This year even the loudest criticism of EUVL was not about "if" but "when," and the predicted range of insertion for EUVL in high-volume manufacturing (HVM) is now 2013-15.
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As expected, the first EUV session of the last day of the conference filled a large room. It was time to hear the status of EUV tool development, in particular the EUV sources.
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I continue to focus on line-edge roughness in my own research. This means that I attended papers in every conference in the symposium, since LER is an issue that cuts across all topics in lithography.
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Looking for new markets, Molecular Imprints has introduced what it calls a roll-to-roll lithography system based on its nanoimprint technology. MII is targeting the display market.During a presentation at SPIE, MII outlined its strategy.
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Cymer revealed it has made significant progress in the development of a power source for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography over the past few months. In a paper delivered Thursday morning at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference here, David Brandt, senior director of EUV marketing at Cymer, detailed significant improvements in source power, availability and dose stability for the company's laser-produced plasma EUV source.
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There is no place I'd rather be on Valentine's Day than in San Jose surrounded by my friends and colleagues in lithography. No wait, I didn't mean that
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After attending SPIE Advanced Lithography, this week in San Jose, Barclays Capital came away with a lower lithography tool shipments forecast, more hope for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, and expectations of a litho buying spree at Intel.
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The IC industry needs to think differently about lithography, according to a panel at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference in San Jose.
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Much to the chagrin of many backers of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, the technology's continually slipping target date for insertion into volume production has enabled several other intriguing lithography technologies to hang around the next-generation lithography race, which not long ago was considered all but over. EUV and alternative technologies were the subject of a panel discussion at the SPIE Advanced Lithography.
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The exhibition at Photonics West 2012 provided a good opportunity to catch up on the latest innovations in imaging technologies. Here, optics.org presents some highlights.
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Attendance at this year's Advanced Lithography symposium is up 10% this year, though we still haven't recovered from the huge drop in numbers that accompanied the economic collapse in 2008. Still, the mood here is good.
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Faculty and scientists working at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering are presenting more than 60 scientific and technical papers at the 38th annual SPIE Advanced Lithography conference this week.
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The latest lithography roadmap from the eBeam Initiative is out this week with specifics at ways to improve wafer yields at upcoming 20-nm and 14-nm technology nodes. The eBeam Initiative roadmap will be presented at the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium.
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Techniques such as model based sub-resolution assist features (MB-SRAF) and 3D mask modeling (M3D) are essential to good imaging, yet can be computationally intensive and can add complexity and cost to mask making. Tachyon FMO enables the use of techniques tailored to localized imaging challenges that can result in tapeout cycle time which is claimed to be just one-third of alternative technologies, and which results in the same desired level of imaging performance.
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Yesterday I found my way to San Jose (a more arduous journey than in the past, since all direct flights from Austin to San Jose have disappeared like civility in American politics). Another SPIE Advanced Lithography conference is about to begin.
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European research institute IMEC has co-developed a directed self-assembly (DSA) manufacturing process to improve both optical and extreme ultraviolet lithography and installed a 300-mm compatible manufacturing line within its pilot fab. The organization is expected to announce details of the successful implementation of DSA at SPIE Advanced Lithography.
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Directed self-assembly (DSA) technology is expected to take center stage at next week's SPIE Advanced Lithography conference in San Jose, California.
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This year's SPIE Advanced Lithography is loaded with interesting keynotes and sessions. To help me narrow down what to see, I spoke with John Sturtevant (Mentor Graphics), co-chair of the Design for Manufacturability through Design-Process Integration conference.
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At next week's SPIE Advanced Lithography conference (San Jose, CA), imec announces the successful implementation of the world first 300mm fab-compatible Directed Self-Assembly (DSA) process line all-under-one-roof in imec's 300mm cleanroom fab. The upgrade of an academic lab-scale DSA process flow to a fab-compatible flow was realized in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin, AZ Electronic Materials and Tokyo Electron Ltd. Imec's DSA collaboration aims to address the critical hurdles to take DSA from the academic lab-scale environment into high-volume manufacturing.
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More than 60 scientific and technical papers detail results from research by CNSE scientists and industry partners at next week's SPIE Advanced Lithography 2012 conference. More than 60 scientific and technical papers detail results from research by CNSE scientists and industry partners at next week's SPIE Advanced Lithography 2012 conference.
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Growing demands for optical communication products suited to the 2000 nm range prompted Phoenix Photonics to address this market and extending the operational wavelengths of its all-fiber based couplers. At Photonics West 2012, the Croydon, UK-based company launched a range of 1x2, 2x2, tap, and cascaded configuration couplers as well as a new polarization scrambler.
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Looking for an item in a large department store or mall can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but that could change thanks to a hybrid location-identification system that uses radio frequency transmitters and overhead LED lights, suggested by a team of researchers from Penn State and Hallym University in South Korea. "LED lights are becoming the norm," said Mohsen Kavehrad, W.L. Weiss Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the Center for Information and Communications Technology Research at Penn State. "The same lights that brighten a room can also provide locational information," he told attendees at SPIE Photonics West.
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Photonics West is such a condensed week of awesome photonics technology that it is next to impossible to describe even a fraction of the best presentations and papers. But I was particularly impressed by the Tuesday 24 January OPTO Plenary presentation by Connie J. Chang-Hasnain, UC Berkeley research professor (and incidentally, an editorial advisory board member for Laser Focus World), entitled "High-Contrast Metastructures for Integrated Optics."
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On January 21, SPIE Photonics West opened its gates again at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It is the largest international event in the world for three key technologies of the 21st century: optics, lasers, and photonics. Photonics West combines conferences and courses with an exhibition. As a result, it creates a crucial link between associations, politicians and scientists and, in turn, allows them to work together to advance the global innovation process. Germany, for the seventh time running, continued its tradition of having an own pavilion at the Photonics West.
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Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are about to pick up one of the key drivers from the low cost IC industry -- gallium nitride (GaN) LEDs are being manufactured on large silicon wafers. This opens the future prospect of manufacturing 300 mm wafers filled with LEDs at a huge cost advantage. At Photonics West 2012 in San Francisco, a team from Osram described 150 mm wafer results, and a team from Samsung described 200 mm results.
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The International Imaging Industry Association has announced that two papers arising from its Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative (CPIQ) were presented at IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging.
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As you might expect from its name, a hyperspectral camera does more than reproduce the appearance of objects. The name connotes spectroscopy: For each of its pixels, a hyperspectral camera yields a continuous spectrum over the same, wide waveband. In 2009 Andy Lambrechts and his colleagues at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium, set out to design a cheaper, more compact camera. Last week at SPIE Photonics West, the camera was publicly unveiled for the first time.
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Glass-maker Schott has announced the launch of its Puravis high-purity glass optical fiber, which not only offers improved properties compared with existing glass fibers, it contains no lead, arsenic or antimony thanks to a newly developed manufacturing process. The new fiber is intended for illumination and medical applications but not optical communications.
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Christopher Ries, internationally renowned glass sculptor from Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, will exhibit some of his glass sculptures at the SPIE Photonics West exhibition.
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There were quite a bunch of companies looking for engineers and scientists at the SPIE Photonics West show this week. At least 35 of them had recruiting booths in the Job Fair area and lots of conversations were going on. Microsoft was there and so were Honeywell, Ocean Optics, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Teledyne, Veeco, and Micron Technology.
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At SPIE Photonics West 2012, imec demonstrates a hyperspectral camera solution based on a system-on-chip image sensor with an integrated hyperspectral sensor. Imec's solution is fast and enables small and cost-efficient camera-solutions. It targets multiple industrial vision applications.
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Plenary speaker Jonathan Cooper of University of Glasgow gave a fascinating talk Monday at SPIE Photonics West entitled "Developing diagnostics for the developing world."
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With several pico-projector developers poised to exploit green laser diodes, and other potential end-users also waiting in the wings, the announcement at Photonics West of a new 532 nm compact diode from QD Laser could mark another step on the road towards successful development of the technology.
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Carlos Serpa, University of Coimbra researcher and CEO of new start-up company LaserLeap Technologies, has won the 2012 Biophotonics Start-up Challenge at Photonics West.
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At Photonics West 2012, scientists from the Technical University of Denmark today presented their new approach to mid-IR imaging, which reduces noise by a factor of a billion when compared to conventional mid-IR imaging methods (such as microbolometers and low-bandgap semiconductors like indium antimonide and mercury cadmium telluride).
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"This year, I'm going to start out by giving you some good news," opined a generally positive David Belforte, the Editor in Chief of Industrial Laser Solutions For Manufacturing, and presenter of the forecast World Markets for Industrial Lasers and Applications. "Since the disaster that was 2009, the recovery has continued surprisingly rapidly and this year we should achieve a new high."
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Wow ... we just jump from show to show to show ... from CES to NAMM -- and now Photonics West. Sure there isn't all that much overlap, but each of these shows are rather interesting to me.
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In 2005 Vanderbilt University's Anita Mahadevan-Jansen and her colleagues made a remarkable discovery: Pulsed IR light triggers a tightly localized response in mammalian peripheral nerves. What's more, the pulse energy needed is far below the threshold for damaging tissue.
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Senior editor Melinda Rose reports from SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco.
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The stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy technique, which beats Ernst Abbe's optical diffraction limit through clever use of fluorescence and de-excitation, has been used to produce in vivo images of synapses in the brain of a 'higher' animal for the first time. Stefan Hell, who invented the STED technique more than a decade ago at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, told delegates at the BiOS 2012 conference in San Francisco that "the door is now open to study synapses directly".
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Microfluidics is a technique for controlling, processing, and analyzing small volumes of liquid in submillimeter devices. The small scale befits biology especially. Not only are cells and microorganisms themselves small, but they are often available only in small, precious quantities. Monitoring a microfluidic device is usually done through an optical microscope, which is typically a hundred times as big as the device itself. What's more, because conventional microscopes rely on lenses, high spatial resolution is obtained at the expense of a small field of view. Paradoxically, big microscopes yield small images.
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So I'm here at SPIE's Photonics West 2012 in San Francisco (and will be here until next Thursday), and I'm as overwhelmed as everyone else by the number and variety of events and sessions at the show. However, I am armed with a secret weapon -- SPIE's free "SPIE Conferences" app, which I have on my Android phone (it's available for the iPhone too).
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Now here's a big laser show: SPIE Photonics West, a conference for the photonics and laser industry, opens Saturday at San Francisco's Moscone Center.
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Despite the 8.00 am start on a Sunday morning, interest in the Quantum Sensing and Nanophotonic Devices IX conference was so great that the event had to be relocated to a larger hall to accommodate the hundred-plus early-bird delegates.
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Of the many topics at the BiOS technical conference at SPIE's Photonics West 2012, I chose to sit in on a few sessions in Conference 8207A, "Photonics in Dermatology and Plastic Surgery." The reason is that my family has a history of skin cancer, which was covered in this conference (and for the record, my family has no history of plastic surgery).
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This year's "hot topics" session at the BiOS biophotonics conference -- part of the Photonics West event -- suggests that optical diagnostic techniques, and in particular coherence tomography, will play a significant role in the fight against cancer.
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The next promising frontier in emerging ubiquitous MEMS applications, SLI (structured-light illumination), may revolutionize metrology applications by removing the need for touch with MEMS. The technology is both smaller and more precise than conventional approaches. Texas Instruments, with its million-mirror DLPs (digital-light processors), is a pioneer in this segment. Besides revolutionizing biometric, facial, dental, and medical scanning, SLI is also opening new frontiers in DLP applications-from industrial inspection systems to scientific instrumentation. (A new module becomes available after SPIE Photonics West).
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QD Laser, Inc., the Institute for Nano Quantum Information Electronics, the University of Tokyo, and Fujitsu Laboratories Limited today announced the successful development of a high-power 532 nm-wavelength compact green laser module with high efficiency and high-speed modulation capability. A prototype of the green laser module will be exhibited at SPIE Photonics West, held from January 24, 2012, in San Francisco.
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Two U.S. scientists have developed a simple algorithm that looks set to revolutionise the way autofocus works, allowing for greater speed and accuracy in digital photography. Later this month, they will be presenting their work at the IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging conference near San Francisco.
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Despite the weak global recovery, financial strains in Europe and North America, and concerns about the Chinese market, corporate earnings for lasers have fared well -- but the road ahead is looking bumpy and uncertain. On 23 January, in conjunction with SPIE Photonics West, Laser Focus World will host the 2012 Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar to navigate what lies ahead.
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The first rule of Laser Camp: Do not look into a laser. The second rule of Laser Camp: Revel in the scientific wonders of nanotechnology, spectroscopy and other disciplines featured at the sixth annual Three Rivers Community College Laser Camp. Contributions from organizations such as SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, pay to purchase material and supplies.
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Edmund Optics is recognizing 70 years of optical innovation with an anniversary celebration starting at SPIE Photonics West.
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Weilin "Will" Hou and Bob Arnone, both oceanographers in the Oceanography Division at NRL Stennis Space Center, will chair the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing's fourth Ocean Sensing and Monitoring conference 23-27 April 23-27.
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It's nearly time for Photonics West again, and with both this year's main event and the BiOS showcase for biophotonics technologies now officially sold out there will be more than 1200 companies showing off their photonics wares. Among those will be the usual suspects, of course. But there will also be plenty of companies that you may not have come across before, whether they are new start-ups, exhibitors making their debut or simply ones that have stayed "under the radar".
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You will find extensive coverage of Photonics West 2012 in the form of articles, blogs, and videos appearing on our website in the coming days. The event attracted more than 20,000 attendees, while the expo itself included more than 1,200 exhibitors.
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The BiOS conference had number of sessions that highlighted technologies that may be transferable to areas outside of formal medicine. As more technologies move into the biological sciences areas, researchers are seeing greater needs for integrating electronics and light emitters and sensors to improve their measurement capabilities. Advances in all of these areas eventually lead to the delivery of advanced healthcare solutions to a greater range of people.
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2011
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The small business innovation research (SBIR) program in the US, which had been in danger of collapsing amid a political impasse, will now be extended for a six-year term after a compromise on its finer details was finally agreed. Washington representatives of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, welcomed the resolution of the SBIR issue, which comes after a remarkable 14 continuing but short-term resolutions over the past few years.
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For nearly five decades, Eustace L. Dereniak has explored the frontiers of optics and engineering to help create 21st century breakthroughs in medicine, military hardware, astronomy and many other fields. Dereniak will become president of SPIE, the world's largest professional organization dedicated to optics and photonics, in January.
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After outgrowing the San Jose convention center and moving to San Francisco in 2010, SPIE Photonics West 2012 will grow yet again, both in terms of number of attendees as well as technical content and exhibition size.
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Jacob Scheuer and others at Tel-Aviv University presented a paper at a recent conference of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, describing the properties and showing the potential of nano-scale antennae that can transmit optical light. Among the applications of the technology is harvesting of radiated energy for solar panels use semiconductors like silicon to capture some energy from the sun. However, they are usually very inefficient. Scheuer showed that his array of antennae captured 95 percent of the energy radiated onto it.
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From high-profile spats like Apple versus Samsung, to more parochial matters like the recent IMRA America vs IPG Photonics case, there's no denying the influence and impact of a strong intellectual property portfolio. In September, President Obama's signature on the America Invents Act (link to full text) set in motion what the White House has described as the most significant reform of the US patent system for more than half a century. But what will all this actually mean in practice for photonics companies and budding entrepreneurs? Paul Davis, a partner in the business law department at Goodwin Procter in Menlo Park, California -- and previously at the laser company Spectra Physics -- will focus on the implications in a presentation at the Photonics West 2012 conference and trade show early next year.
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The next James Bond flick could very likely feature a situation where the baddies get bashed up by an invisible Bond. Yup, Bond film writers may soon borrow an idea from the latest scientific development: the 'invisibility strands'. So the next time you see Bond, rather don't see Bond, it could be because he's wearing a new gadget that makes him invisible. The invisibility strands created by Texas-based scientist could soon result in a cloak. NASA scientists working along the same lines reported at the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference talked about success in creating the darkest substance on Earth, virtually invisible to the human eye.
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Organizers SPIE and Photonics Media have revealed the short-list of finalists for the 2011 Prism Awards, the annual international competition for companies working on photonics technologies and applications.
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Supplying enough power to meet all our daily needs would require enormous solar panels. And solar-powered energy collected by panels made of silicon, a semiconductor material, is limited -- contemporary panel technology can only convert approximately seven percent of optical solar waves into electric current. Professors at Tel Aviv Universityand its innovative new Renewable Energy Center are now developing a solar panel composed of nano-antennas instead of semiconductors. By adapting classic metallic antennas to absorb light waves at optical frequencies, a much higher conversion rate from light into useable energy could be achieved. The technology was recently presented at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco and published in the conference proceedings.
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NASA engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it -- a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology. The team of engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, reported their findings recently at the SPIE Optics + Photonics conference, the largest interdisciplinary technical meeting in this discipline.
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A Q&A with Eugene Arthurs, CEO, SPIE: Photonics Online had the privilege of asking Dr. Arthurs for his view of the optics and photonics landscape, SPIE's present and future activities and goals, the status of the update to the Harnessing Light study, and the interesting new technologies and trends highlighted at SPIE shows this year.
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In April and May 2011, SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics) conducted what is probably the largest and most comprehensive salary survey of the optics sector to date. Calling on its members from more than 170 countries around the globe to answer a series of questions by e-mail, the society collected more than 7,300 responses. The results, which are now live on the SPIE website, make for interesting reading.
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Ah, who can forget the 2010 50th anniversary celebration of the laser? Our normally docile and academic-minded photonics industry was jumping in 2010, with jubilant celebrations ... But wait, the celebration continues into 2012, which is the official 50th anniversary of the diode laser -- those little solid-state beacons of light that have found their way into our lives in countless ways. At the 2012 Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar, held during Photonics West 2012, David Welch, executive VP and chief strategy officer of Infinera, will present "Celebrating 50 Years of Laser Diodes."
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Preliminary results from the largest optics and photonics salary survey are in. The median salary for photonics worker is $75,000. The global survey of over 7000 optics and photonics professionals was conducted by SPIE, the international society of optics and photonics. The survey found a large range of salaries, depending on an employee's location and the field of employment. THE SPIE salary survey website has many more detail.
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Hyperspectral imaging separates visible and invisible light into a series of small bands. This data can then be processed to identify materials based on their spectral fingerprints. The technology has many applications in mineralogy (to help find oil fields, for example), surveillance and agriculture. Its materials characterisation capabilities can also be applied to disease detection. However, the technology as it exists today requires the use of complex, bulky systems and is expensive to deploy. At the imec Technology Forum, Francesco Pessolano of imec's NVision programme, explained how the technology could find broader applications if the glass components of a vision system were replaced with a chip. A prototype of the digital optical system will be shown at SPIE Photonics West in January.
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The French infrared detector specialist Sofradir will supply the high-resolution focal plane arrays used in a new constellation of Earth observation military satellites being built by a European consortium. Handling the huge amounts of data created by high-resolution aerial and satellite imaging at a speed that can benefit forces on the ground was identified by Regina Dugan, director of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a major bottleneck earlier this year in a plenary talk at the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing (DSS) conference.
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A team from the IOI-Malta Operational Centre has statistically compared ocean colour values from satellites with in situ values collected in the field, to gauge the productivity of a marine area, assessing surface runoff from land as well as identifying phenomena such as upwelling. The outcome of this research was presented last month at the SPIE Remote Sensing congress in Prague and has been published as part of the congress proceedings.
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A promising new approach to achieving the goal of efficiently generating electricity from sunlight is being developed by Arizona State University engineers Cun-Zheng Ning and Derek Caselli. Details of the project, which is supported by the U.S. Army Research Office, are presented in a recent article by Ning and Caselli posted on the website of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
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If you want to tour the world of photonics, flip through the technical program and exhibitor list for SPIE Photonics West. The annual trade fair brings together a wide-ranging conference program, a professional development program with 50 courses, two exhibitions, and numerous networking and special events, all focused tightly on photonics, lasers and biomedical optics. Each year, more than 19,000 people from all sectors of the photonics industry -- researchers, exhibitors, technologists, students and industry leaders -- flock to California from more than 50 countries to attend the event.
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The eBeam Initiative held its second annual BACUS event on Tuesday, September 20, to continue to promote greater education and focus on eBeam technologies.
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It could be a great tag line for the industry: "Photonics, for a Better World." In reality, "Photonics for a Better World" is the name of a special pavilion at SPIE Optics & Photonics, which was held in August in San Diego.
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Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a simpler way to generate single-chip terahertz radiation, a discovery that could soon allow for more rapid security screening, border protection, high-sensitivity biological/chemical analysis, agricultural inspection, and astronomical applications. The work, headed by Manijeh Razeghi, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, was presented in August at the SPIE Optics + Photonics conference in San Diego.
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The first Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award -- which honors optical imaging researcher Britton Chance, who passed away in November 2010 at the age of 97 -- will be presented at the upcoming SPIE Photonics West in 2012. Deadline for award nominations is 1 October 1.
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A doctoral student at the University of Texas, Austin, who has been detained for months in his native Iran on espionage charges will go on trial on 4 October. Omid Kokabee, who was working toward a Ph.D. in optics, was arrested at a Tehran airport while on vacation in Iran in late January or early February. News of the new trial date comes as a number of scientific groups including SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, the International Commission for Optics, and others have signed open letters to the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, requesting clemency for Kokabee.
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At the 2011 SPIE masking conference, known as BACUS, we had a chance to meet with and talk to Aki Fujimura of D2S, Inc., about his company's new product offering. The new platform is an interactive masking workstation that allows for simultaneous optimization of lithographic patterning for BOTH mask and the resulting wafer image.
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D2S announced a mask-wafer double simulation accelerated workstation, TrueMask DS, for R&D exploration, bit-cell design, hot-spot analysis and mask defect categorization at the SPIE Photomask Technology conference.
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The March 11, 2011, Tohuku earthquake and tsunami caused many deaths and much property destruction, bringing parts of Japan to a virtual standstill. One casualty was Photomask Japan 2011 (PMJ), which was originally scheduled to take place in Yokohama in April but was cancelled after the horrific events. PMJ has a sister conference, SPIE Photomask Technology (known in the vernacular as BACUS), annually staged in Monterey, California, in September, and this year BACUS has been extended by one-half day to allow the "10 best" PMJ papers to be presented in a special kick-off session.
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Applied Materials unveiled its Centura Tetra EUV advanced reticle etch system at the SPIE Photomask (BACUS) conference. The system addresses changing requirements from transmission photomasks used in optical lithography to reflection photomasks needed for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL).
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The eBeam Initiative, a forum dedicated to the education and promotion of new semiconductor manufacturing approaches based on electron beam (eBeam) technologies, today announced that several of its members will present the latest eBeam breakthroughs in mask and direct-write technologies at the SPIE/BACUS Photomask Symposium 2011 in Monterey, California. The eBeam Initiative also announced today that five additional companies have joined its ranks.
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Preliminary findings from a global survey of more than 7,000 people working in various areas of optics and photonics show that the average (median) salary for those employed in the field is $75,000. The survey, conducted by SPIE and the largest of its kind yet undertaken, found a very wide distribution of salaries, dependent largely on the location of an employee and whether they are working in industry or academia.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. will switch on its first extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machine in two weeks. The milestone marks the next step in the foundry's goal of evaluating three competing lithography machines for making next-generation chips. Early this year, the industry was concerned with how much power EUV lithography will would need. Keynote speakers at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference have admitted that while lithography is making headway, the technology's power source continues to lag behind.
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As the dust settles on Solyndra's high-profile failure to crack the photovoltaics market -- at least in the company's current guise, ahead of any potential restructure -- the ability of novel PV technologies to compete with the entrenched silicon and CdTe approaches that dominate the scene is in question. At last month's SPIE-hosted Optics + Photonics conference in San Diego, California, many of the hottest photonics research topics were under discussion, with world-leading groups describing their advances in technologies ranging from hyperspectral imaging to the potential optoelectronic applications of silk.
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Scientists from Opto-Knowledge Systems, Pacific Northwest National Lab, and Rutgers University have developed a new type of hollow-core optical fiber that can deliver mid-infrared (mid-IR) as well as long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) laser light. The fibers, detailed in "Fiber delivery of mid-IR lasers" from the SPIE Newsroom (24 August 2011), are important for mid-IR light delivery from quantum-cascade lasers (QCLs) and other mid-IR sources in instruments that can detect trace molecular species in such applications as explosives detection, environmental pollutant monitoring, and in analysis of biomarkers in a patient's breath.
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Solar and optoelectronics technology firm OPEL Solar International has changed its corporate identity in a move designed to reflect its expertise in two distinct photonics sectors. According to CEO Leon Pierhal, OPEL Solar's CEO, both business units are now looking for investment. "We need more capital," he told optics.org at the recent SPIE Optics + Photonics conference in San Diego ...."
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A special edition of Light Matters, broadcast from the exhibition floor at SPIE Optics + Photonics
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Synopsys Inc. has announced the winners of the 2011 Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition, two University of Rochester students who were recognized for their achievements in optical design. Samples of their projects were on display this week at SPIE Optics + Photonics at the San Diego Convention Center.
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Radhakrishna Sureshkumar, professor and chair of biomedical and chemical engineering in Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, and professor of physics, has developed a patent-pending robust process to manufacture stable suspensions of metal nanoparticles capable of capturing sunlight. His work is was presented at the SPIE Optics + Photonics conference on August 23.
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A new 5 MW concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) project recently completed by market-leading CPV system company Amonix is the largest yet built in the U.S. Amonix founder Vahan Garboushian showed details of the New Mexico installation during a plenary talk at SPIE’s Optics + Photonics show in San Diego, describing the 10 kW “megamodule” building blocks on which the systems are based. According to a Greentech Media article, the project has been built and is being operated by NextEra Energy Resources, with the electricity generated sold to El Paso Electric.
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SPIE CEO Eugene Arthurs is among those providing perspective on consideration by Congress to cut funding for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
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The specialty optical components manufacturer Schott announced at SPIE Optics + Photonics that it is now making products based on chalcogenide glass in Pennsylvania, in a move that will enable the company's US subsidiary to target the domestic defense sector more effectively.
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Last year's SPIE Optics + Photonics conference was particularly memorable, mostly for the awesome PennWell customer-appreciation catamaran cruise and the typically warm and breezy weather we all enjoyed.
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NASA will showcase and discuss a wealth of projects, technologies and science at the 2011 SPIE Optics and Photonics conference.
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As semiconductor devices push into the 20nm process node and beyond, new techniques are needed to extend the viability of 193nm immersion (193i) optical lithography. ... concerns about the thermal effects of overlapping shots were laid to rest in the paper published at the 2011 SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium by eBeam Initiative members.
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A novel retinal imaging system developed by Jane You Jia of Hong Kong Polytechnic University performs computer-aided, non-intrusive diabetic retinopathy screening and monitoring and affords privacy protection ... took second place in the SPIE Medical Imaging 2009 international competition Retinopathy Online Challenge.
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Vahan Garboushian on a breakthrough year for concentrated PV, and why the technology promises to be much more than a niche solution ... A central message from Garboushian’s plenary talk at SPIE Optics + Photonics will be that CPV has more headroom to improve LCOE than any other PV technology, and could get very close to the DOE’s solar electricity target cost of $0.06-0.07 per kWh.
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Like many in the industry, Rochester optics companies are faced with a shortage of skilled technicians. To address this problem, the Rochester Regional Optics Cluster, Monroe Community College, and local high schools are collaborating to broaden inner-city high-school students' career opportunities and create a workforce pipeline. ... In fact, this problem was discussed earlier this year at SPIE Optifab 2011 in a panel discussion called "The Future of Optical Manufacturing in North America."
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While module developers work to perfect 4x25-Gbps transmission over singlemode fiber for 100GBase-LR4 and -ER4 applications, technologists have already begun work on enabling similar transmission over multimode fiber. Recent demonstrations have shown progress on both the transmission and reception ends of the spectrum. ... more information in a paper at the subsequent "Enabling Photonics Technologies for Defense, Security, and Aerospace Applications" conference sponsored by the SPIE.
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The SPIE chapter hosted 16 female students from a STEM interest group at Arcadia High School for a day of optics ....
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Photonics technologies underpin at least 10% of the European economy, and that reliance will increase as those technologies are further developed in the next decade. That is just one of the headline conclusions from a new study on the leveraging impact of photonics that has been prepared for the European Commission (EC) by a team working closely with the Photonics21 industry group. ... The photonics sector member organization SPIE has applauded that aim ...
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Some 6,000 members of the military, security, and environmental industries gathered in Orlando from April 25-29 for SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing (DSS) 2011. Perhaps the week's biggest attraction was the DSS exhibition, featuring the latest imaging and sensing technologies from 500 companies.
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... some 1,700 optics industry representatives from around the globe are in Rochester this week for presentations on such topics as part of Optifab 2011, a North American optics manufacturing convention and technical trade show that takes place every two years.
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The head of the US defence research agency, DARPA, says industry must find better ways of using the data garnered by ISR systems. Dr Regina Dugan, director of DARPA, said she was concerned that some on the front line in Afghanistan had lost faith in the S&T community, which was not delivering solutions on time.
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Video: Military & Aerospace Electronics editor John Keller visits the SPIE Defense, Security & Sensing 2011 show in Orlando, Florida.
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A US company pioneering the use of lasers to recharge the batteries of UAVs in flight says such a system could be potentially fielded as early as next year. LaserMotive is demonstrating the ability to 'power beam' via laser several UAV aircraft, including rotary-wing vehicles, at the 2011 SPIE Defence Security, and Sensing exposition ....
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According to a report from SPIE, the Security, Defense,+ Sensing symposium in Orlando, Florida, is attracting a strong audience for sessions on infrared technologies and applications, with papers from Sofradir, The Aerospace Corp., SCD Semicondcutor Devices, Thales Optronics, and others.
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If asked to consider the environmental credentials of photonics technology, the chances are that you will think first of clean energy generation through solar photovoltaics, or perhaps the energy-saving potential of solid-state lighting. But those increasingly valuable applications are by no means the limit of the possibilities. As Trumpf's Michael Lang noted at SPIE's first Eco-Photonics conference in Strasbourg, France, this week, one highly evident trend is the way in which high-power lasers used in materials production have become dramatically smaller and more energy-efficient in recent years.
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography event in San Jose, Synopsys presented their current mask making solutions.
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Our solar system's star continues to be very active: The Solar Dynamics Observatory has released a new video of a very active Sun.... Some of the SDO team will be in San Diego August 21-25th for the SPIE Optics + Photonics symposium.
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Evolutionary cognitive scientist Mark Changizi argues that "3D movie" makers have been missing out on most of their creative space, because they have not recognized the full range of powers their binocular movies can harness: "At the end of January I was in San Francisco at the SPIE conference on Electronic Imaging, and attended a two-hour session demonstrating samples of state-of-the-art 3D videos from upcoming movies, video games, advertisements and artistic pieces. The general reaction of the several hundred people there was positive."
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After decades in development and years behind schedule, it looks like extreme UV lithography is finally closing in on commercialization. ... And the EUV question took center stage at SPIE's Advanced Lithography conference and exhibition, held in San Jose in late February and early March.
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The 2011 SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium was noticeably different from previous meeting which highlighted new tools and methods. This year few hardware or software tools were innovative enough to be news worthy, rather it was all about materials and the remarkable things they could be made to do -- or not do.
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Synopsys introduced the Proteus LRC for lithography verification at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference ... George Bailey, director, technical marketing at Synopsys, describes the data flow process in a podcast interview.
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A new laser device created at the University of Central Florida could make high-speed computing faster and more reliable, opening the door to a new age of the Internet. ... Dennis Deppe and Sabine Freisem presented their findings in January at the SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco.
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A pair of Wall Street analysts and a litho exec describe their key takeaways from this year's SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium: How far from HVM are the latest EUV results, how are the competitive source vendors faring, and why some work in improving EUV is falling short.
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For decades, lithography has been the key chip-production technology to scale or shrink a chip. That still holds true. But at the recent SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, there were signs that the lithography community -- and their customers --literally needed a shrink, the slang term for a psychiatrist.
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Among the topics covered at KLA-Tencor's annual Lithography Users Forum at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference was extension of KLAC's Teron 600 platform for inspection of EUV blanks at the 16nm half pitch node. ... In a podcast interview recorded at the event, Brian Trafas, chief marketing officer at KLA-Tencor, discusses the process control needs facing the semiconductor industry.
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Aki Fujimura, chairman & CEO of D2S, provides an update of the eBeam Initiative roadmap in a podcast interview held at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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A pair of university professors say they have developed a radio transmission protocol and diagnostic algorithm for wireless sensor networks that enables the real-time streaming of sensor data to measure the local structural deterioration of highway bridges. The protocol is described in a scientific paper posted on the SPIE Newsroom titled "Wireless vibration sensors track condition of highway bridges," authored by Matthew Whelan, Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte, and Kerop Janoyan, Clarkson Univ.
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Luc Van den hove, president/CEO of IMEC, summarizes key themes from his keynote presentation at the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium in a podcast interview with SST senior technical editor Debra Vogler.
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At SPIE Advanced Lithography, David Lam, chairman of Multibeam Corp. and the founder and former CEO of Lam Research, presented the concept of complementary e-beam lithography -- a technology that is being used to complement and extend optical lithography for advanced logic ICs. ... In the podcast interview with Debra Vogler, Lam discusses the technology in detail, and also cites the inspiration for his paper: a presentation on complementary lithography by Intel Senior Fellow Yan Borodovsky, at last year's SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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During the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Applied Materials and Magma Design Automation announced that Magma's CAD-based navigation and yield analysis software has been integrated with Applied Materials' inspection systems; it's called Excalibur Litho and targets designs at 2xnm and below. The companies claim that, without the ability to overcome litho qualification roadblocks rapidly, 22nm designs will be extremely time-consuming and expensive to bring to volume production.
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For imprint watchers, SPIE's Advanced Microlithography in February was very interesting, in that there were several presentations that appeared to be linked, but the presenters denied that there were links ... which makes me think!
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If anything in the litho world is certain, it's that 193nm ArF immersion lithography (193i) is being extended. Nikon's Masato Hamatani opened the Nikon LithoVision conference at this year's SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium, describing concrete efforts in improving overlay to less than 2nm and throughput to 4000 wafers per day.
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Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography was one of six conference tracks and a major point of discussion at the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium (Feb. 28-Mar.3, San Jose, CA), with dozens of papers presented on various technology and infrastructure areas of EUV development.
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Lithography is where design meets manufacturing, and so the SPIE Advanced Lithography (AL conference this year was where Applied Materials and Magma Design Automation chose to launch their new collaborative solution to the problem of managing yield data when ramping the most complex ICs in high-volume manufacturing (HVM).
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Electron-beam Direct Write (EbDW) lithography on commercial wafers may sneak in the industry behind the technology developments for mask writing. At SPIE AL this year, Aki Fujimora (CEO of D2S and head of the E-beam Initiative) talked with SemiMD about solving today's mask problems using tricks that will be needed before EbDW can be used in HVM.
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This week in San Jose began cold, but warmed up by Thursday to the kind of weather we all expect from California. So too with the conference, and I think Thursday had some of the most interesting, and surprising, presentations.
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Gigaphoton released the latest developments in its EUV source program at this week's SPIE Advanced Lithography conference. The company reported achieving a conversion efficiency (CE) of 3.3% with tin droplets <20µm in diameter with its plasma-based laser-produced plasma (LPP).
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, ASML Holding NV disclosed more details about its progress with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.
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"You can't approach the future by predictions. You approach the future by making it happen," Terry Brewer, founder/president of Brewer Science, says. And this mindset carries over into real-world results for the semiconductor industry, he points out: EUV will happen if we want to make it happen." SST's Debra Vogler caught up with Terry Brewer at the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium.
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Nigel Farrar, VP, marketing & lithography technology, Cymer, provides an update on extreme ultra violet (EUV) source technology -- including training and next-generation timelines -- in a podcast interview at SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium this week in San Jose, Kurt Ronse, director of lithography at imec, discussed the research center's new ASML pre-production EUV scanner, EUV readiness with source power (still a concern) and resists (practically there). He also discusses the perhaps overlooked topic of pattern collapse.
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Nano-imprint lithography has made solid progress over the years. "Things are really humming for us on both the technology and tool development front in the CMOS space" and in hard disk drives, said Mark Melliar-Smith, president and CEO of Molecular Imprints Inc. ... At SPIE....
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There are two sure bets at the annual SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium, which convened this week in San Jose. First: about half the presenters will show some rendition of the ITRS Roadmap. Couldn't we just begin each session with a slide of the roadmap relevant to that session so we don't collectively burn eight or ten papers in Roadmap Hades? Second: someone will point out (or complain) that EUV gets all the money (okay, only 90% of the money).
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Directed self-assembly (DSA) -- a technology based on a concept that was virtually unknown outside of research labs a few years ago -- has emerged as a legitimate contender for use in future semiconductor manufacturing. "Directed self-assembly cannot be ignored," said Christopher Bencher, a member of the technical staff at Applied Materials Inc., at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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It's a clash of the titans in the foundry industry between GlobalFoundries Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC). The silicon foundry rivals are separately expanding their process offerings and services for customers, but they have different strategies to knock each other off from their respective perches. GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and, of course, Intel Corp., also have slightly different strategies in lithography, which is a big factor in scaling to bring products to market. At the SPIE event this week ....
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At this week's SPIE Advanced Lithography conference in San Jose, Debra Vogler, senior technical editor, caught up with Franklin Kalk, CTO of Toppan Photomasks, to get his input on how EUV lithography development is shaping up, comparing the pros and cons of EUV lithography vs. e-beam direct write (EBDW), and why there's room for both technologies in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing.
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, KLA-Tencor Corp. has outlined its metrology and inspection tool roadmap for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Luc Van den hove, president and CEO of IMEC, announced during his keynote speech that IMEC has started the installation of ASML's pre-production extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) scanner, the NXE:3100, in its Leuven, Belgium, facility.
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If you attended SPIE's Photonics West 2011, you no doubt saw numerous caped individuals at the Ocean Optics and Edmund Optics booths in the exhibition hall. And who knows -- you may have donned a cape yourself!
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Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is making progress, but the power source for the technology is behind schedule, warned keynote speakers at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference here, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) outlined more details about its 450-mm fab plans.
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Japan has formed a consortium to propel the infrastructure for photomask and inspection gear in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. The group in Japan is called EDEC, said Shang-Yi Chiang, senior vice president of R&D at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), during a keynote at the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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Belgian research institute IMEC has announced it has installed an NXE:3100 pre-production extreme ultra-violet lithography machine from ASML at its Leuven facility. Luc Van den hove, President and CEO of IMEC, is expected to announced the move during his keynote speech at today's SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference here, maskless startup Multibeam Corp. will outline more details about its ongoing efforts to commercialize its so-called Complementary E-Beam Lithography (CEBL) technology in the market.
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At the annual LithoVision event here, an executive from lithography vendor Nikon Corp. outlined the business dynamics in the market. LithoVision is sponsored by Nikon. It runs in conjunction with the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference here.
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At the annual LithoVision event here, Japan's Nikon Corp. tipped its lithography roadmap. Nikon disclosed a new 193-nm immersion tool, dubbed the S621D. The company also tipped a separate illuminator product and a metrology technology for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. LithoVision is sponsored by Nikon. It runs in conjunction with the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference.
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SPIE's Photonics West 2011 saw the launch of new products: including IPG Photonics' (Oxford, MA) quasi-continuous-wave (QCW) fiber laser designed to compete with YAG lasers in materials-processing applications, Horiba's (Edison, NJ) one-shot simultaneous hyperspectral imaging camera that captures spectral information for dynamic events, and Hamamatsu's (Bridgewater, NJ) micro PMT (photomultiplier tube) detector, with the same performance as a regular PMT but in a miniature package.
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The eBeam Initiative has highlighted that several of its members will present the latest breakthroughs in DFEB mask and direct-write technology at the annual SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium 2011 ... four additional companies have joined its ranks.
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At SPIE's Photonics West 2011, research center Imec (Leuven, Belgium) and laser diode manufacturer Opnext (Fremont, CA) described their newest imaging and display technology innovations to the editorial staff of Laser Focus World.
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SEMATECH experts will present world-leading research and development results on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) manufacturability and extendibility, alternative lithography, and related areas of metrology at the SPIE Advanced Lithography 2011 conferences on February 27 - March 3 at the San Jose Convention Center and Marriott in San Jose, CA.
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Researchers are creating a new type of solar cell designed to self-repair like natural photosynthetic systems in plants by using carbon nanotubes and DNA, an approach aimed at increasing service life and reducing cost. ... The concept also was unveiled in an online article featured on the website for SPIE.
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SPIE asked on LinkedIn what our favorite moments from Photonics West 2011 were. Since my answer is lengthy, I am answering on my blog rather than as a comment ... As an exhibitor, it is very easy to answer the question. My favorite moment is always 10AM on Tuesday morning, the moment when a voice announces over the public address system that the show is now open ....
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A video summary of highlights from SPIE Photonics West and the 2010 Prism Awards for Photonics Innovation ....
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Integrated 3-D chips combining logic, memory and optical interconnects are on the horizon, but won't be available for at least 10 years, according to Bert-Jan Offrein, manager of photonics at IBM's Zurich Research Lab. "Things will come together, eventually," Offrein said. Speaking at a panel discussion at the SPIE Photonics West 2011 conference last week, Offrein said the development of optical interconnects is being driven by advances in supercomputing.
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What a difference a year makes. In January 2010, Photonics West was, according to many accounts, a pretty glum affair. Despite the new San Francisco location -- usually enough to lift the spirits of anyone in possession of a soul -- and good attendance, the prevailing mood was one of caution, amid a photonics market that had suffered a major slump in 2009. ... Fast forward to 2011, and the mood could hardly be more different.
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One of several professional development programs at Photonics West this year was "Getting a Job in 2011 and Beyond," a panel discussion held for the benefit of employment seekers of all stripes. Held in conjunction with the SPIE Job Fair, which itself was more successful than any in many years, the discussion provided expertise on job search tactics from people directly involved in the hiring process.
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On the final morning of Photonics West 2011, SPIE hosted a special "Future of Photonics" forum designed to gather industry input for a comprehensive new study of the optics and photonics field. Erik Svedberg, senior program officer with the U.S. National Academies, and Eugene Arthurs, CEO of SPIE, moderated the event, which was attended by hundreds of Photonics West attendees.
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At Photonics West on Monday, as the BiOS part of the week was winding down, SPIE sponsored its first Biophotonics Start-Up Challenge. Based on the concept of the "elevator pitch," 19 researchers -- mostly newly minted PhDs and others at the beginning of their careers -- each offered two-minute descriptions of how their idea was worthy of further development and funding.
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The mood at Photonics West reminded me of a team when it's winning its games. The mood was good and no one wanted to spend too much time second guessing what they are doing. Whatever they are doing, it's working.
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Executives from six laser and optics companies gathered to share their perspectives on the state of the industry Wednesday as part of a SPIE-sponsored panel at Photonics West.
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Because a new market of miniaturized low-cost photonics will soon be created that can leverage the vast scale of CMOS manufacturing to revolutionize industries from computing and communication to biomedicine and imaging, panelists representing different aspects of the industry gathered Tuesday afternoon at SPIE Photonics West to discuss what they have discovered from their positions at the forefront of silicon photonics.
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Interesting tidbit overheard yesterday at the SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco. It seems one of the nation's prime defense contractors, in a recent Webcast for its suppliers, is strongly urging its military subcontractors to urge their senators and congressional representatives to preserve current levels of defense spending in the interest of creating and preserving jobs.
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Ocean Optics wants to have fun with their inventions, and so their mesmerizing display at the San Francisco Moscone Center (take a virtual tour) for the world's leading photonics, laser and biomedical optics event -- Photonics West -- is bound to catch your eye.
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Amit Lal envisions a day when tiny wireless sensor networks will be placed throughout the world in areas that can help save lives, prevent disasters, and even help sustain the environment, with a battery-free power supply that will last 100 years. Lal explained how the work of his group could help make that happen in his MOEMS/MEMS symposium plenary talk, "Microsystem Pathways to a Greener World," Monday morning at SPIE Photonics West.
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After expanding by a remarkable 27% in 2010, the global market for lasers is expected to enjoy robust growth in 2011 and into 2012, thanks largely to a sustained recovery in materials processing and communications applications. Speaking at the annual Laser Marketplace Seminar held in parallel with Photonics West in San Francisco, California, the market analysis by Pennwell's Steve Anderson and David Belforte painted a picture of a very healthy industry, following the pain of 2009.
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Research papers on solar cells and LEDs were singled out for their contributions to green photonics by the MOEMS-MEMS (micro-optoelectromechanical systems/microelectromechanical systems) symposium committee at SPIE Photonics West Monday morning.
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The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2010 was abuzz about a slew of prototype 3D TVs, but if new research from the MIT Media Lab is any indication, holographic TVs could be close behind. At the SPIE Practical Holography conference in San Francisco the weekend of Jan. 23, members of Michael Bove's Object-Based Media Group presented a new system that can capture visual information using off-the-shelf electronics, send it over the internet to a holographic display, and update the image at rates approaching those of feature films.
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A fiber laser that replaces aging flashlamp-pumped solid-state lasers, an analyzer that detects hazardous chemicals in seconds at a distance and spherical and chromatic aberration-free low-cost optical components are among the winners of the 2010 Prism Awards for photonics innovation announced Jan. 26 at a gala ceremony in San Francisco during Photonics West.
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Researchers with Purdue University are creating a type of solar cell capable of self-repair via carbon nanotubes and DNA, according to an article published in the SPIE Newsroom.
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Fluorescent optical ranging systems can rapidly assess and map concentrations of marine oil pollution suspended in the top few meters below the water surface, according to an article authored by researchers at Laser Diagnostic Instruments and PinPoint Environmental published in the SPIE Newsroom.
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UC San Diego environmental engineering professor Jan Kleissl is working on technologies and methods that will better predict how much power we can actually harness from the sun ... Kleissl explains his intensive solar research in a recent video produced by SPIE.
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2010
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According to a recent report from researchers at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering published in the SPIE Newsroom, infrared-based algorithms offer an alternative for handling variations in face appearance caused by illumination changes, facial expressions, and face poses during facial recognition.
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When Eugene Arthurs, Executive Director of SPIE, visited Singapore for two days in December, the Optics and Photonics Society of Singapore held a welcome party for him.
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After a successful debut in San Francisco last year, SPIE Photonics West is returning to the Golden Gate City for what is shaping up to be a hotbed of industry insights, market trends, the latest technologies and, of course, the ever-popular networking and hobnobbing with some of the finest minds in the photonics and optics industry.
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Knovel, the leading provider of a web-based engineering application integrating technical information with analytical and search tools, today announced new content partnerships with four highly respected publishers and societies, including SPIE.
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Researchers are exploring new user-controlled, efficient lighting systems in an effort to provide better illumination and save energy. The MIT Media Lab aims to build easy-to-control systems that can cut lighting bills by more than half. Preliminary results of the ongoing research of the polychromatic solid-state lighting controlled using a sensor network were published this summer in the Proceedings of SPIE.
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