SPIE Senior Member Peter Hartmann, a member of the SPIE Board of directors and a director of market and customer relations in Advanced Optics at SCHOTT in Germany, has received the company's R&D award for innovations in glass-ceramic.
Hartmann received the SCHOTT employee prize for developing a new, differentiated methodology for determining the strength of its zero-expansion-glass, ZERODUR glass ceramic. ZERODUR is used in applications involving high mechanical stress in astronomy (lightweight mirrors for telescopes) and microlithography (wafer mounts for chip fabrication).
With Hartmann's new approach, the strength of ZERODUR components can be predicted more accurately and SCHOTT has received a clear advantage over competitors, said SCHOTT Board member Hans-Joachim Konz.
"His work exhibits a great degree of technical and scientific professionalism," Konz said. "This is a good example of how science and technical marketing can work together successfully."
The prize for special achievements in R&D in 2013 was awarded during the recently held SCHOTT Technology Days in Germany.
Hartmann has more than 25 years' experience in optical metrology, properties and applications of glass, including ZERODUR and other special optical glass for telescope components and microlithography. He has been involved in several groups determining optical standards for the International Organization for Standardization (IOS).
He is the author of numerous papers for SPIE, including a December 2012 article in the SPIE flagship journal, Optical Engineering, "ZERODUR®: deterministic approach for strength design," and "Zero expansion glass ceramic ZERODUR® roadmap for advanced lithography," a paper he co-authored for SPIE Advanced Lithography in February 2013.
SCHOTT is a major supplier of optical materials for high-energy applications such as debris shields in the National Ignition Facility fusion project at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (USA), and large segmented-mirror telescopes like the KECK and the European Very Large Telescope.
Hartmann serves as a general chair for SPIE Photonics Europe, to be held in Brussels in April 2014, and is a member of several program committees for other SPIE conferences.
He has a doctorate in physics from Max-Planck-Institute Mainz where he worked on the development of scintillation glasses.
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