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Nobel Prize winner Zhores I. Alferov is the 2002 SPIE Gold Medal Recipient Recipient of the highest honor that SPIE bestows, the 2002 Gold Medal of the Society, SPIE Member Zhores I. Alferov has made an enormous impact on the field of semiconductor heterostructures. His contributions to physics and III-V semiconductor heterostructures led directly to […]

Photonic crystal fibers offer extraordinary performance, including tailorable dispersion, single-mode behavior over many wavelengths, and useful nonlinear properties. Over the past few years, photonic crystal fiber (PCF) technology has evolved from a strong research-oriented field to a commercial technology providing characteristics such as single-mode operation from the UV to IR spectral regions, large mode areas […]

Packaging design for photonic components requires careful attention to the optical and electrical connections while maintaining performance in the face of thermal, mechanical, and vibrational stresses. Every day, more and more applications use photonics components to enhance performance, reduce size, or reduce cost. The demand for volume deployment of photonics components has soared, and with […]

Mending tissue with laser welding or soldering provides stronger, cleaner healing than sutures. Bonding the edges of human tissue is a vital step in most surgical procedures. In medicine today, surgeons suture or staple incisions, and the tissue bonding process occurs naturally. Laser-assisted bonding, which is in the developmental stages, may help improve post-operative bonding, […]

SOAs offer a key technology for amplification, switching, wavelength conversion, and regeneration in optical networks. As bandwidth demand rises, the construction of optical packet-switching nodes targeting optical routers would benefit from fast optical switches. Semiconductor-optical-amplifier (SOA) technology provides this high-speed switching capability as well as gain, high extinction ratio, and high integration potential. Moreover, it […]

Innovative stacking techniques increase the output power and brightness of diode laser bars for materials-processing applications. Semiconductor lasers are being used in a growing number of materials-processing tasks, including plastic and metal welding, marking, hole drilling, soldering, heat treating, and adhesive curing. Whether for direct use or pumping applications, ongoing research is focused on delivering […]

A system is called ‘smart’ if a user perceives the actions and reactions of the system as being smart. Media is therefore managed smartly if a computer system helps a user to perform an extensive set of operations on a large media database quickly, efficiently, and conveniently. Such operations include searching, browsing, manipulating, sharing, and […]

Manufacturers who depend on automated inspection systems for process monitoring and quality control generate large databases of product and defect imagery. As these image repositories grow in size, the manufacturer’s ability to reuse this data is limited by the large volumes, and the difficulties and intricacies of automating the description of imagery for cataloging, searching, […]

The purpose of any photodetector is to convert electromagnetic radiation into an electronic signal—ideally one that is proportional to incident light intensity. Because they are compact, versatile, and can be produced economically in high volume, p-i-n photodiodes have become the detector of choice in applications from biomedical instrumentation to telecommunications.

Diffractive optics can simulate the effects of many conventional optics while offering powerful optical performance in a lightweight, compact component. When optical engineers talk about controlling light through diffraction, a number of terms get bandied about: binary optics, kinoforms, computer-generated holographic optical elements, and plain old diffraction gratings. The overall term that encompasses all of […]

Micromachines make their way into optical switches, multiplexers, and crossconnects to enhance data flow over optical networks. Tiny machines, so small that they’re invisible to the human eye, are tackling a wide array of challenges in the manufacturing of automobiles and airplanes, in chemistry and biology, and in medicine and sensing. In optical communications, these […]

Following standards and using appropriate safety equipment can help eliminate the risk of eye injuries during laser use. The high radiance or brightness of a laser provides the laser’s great value in material processing and laser surgery, but it also accounts for its significant hazard to the eye. Even a small helium-neon (HeNe) alignment laser […]

Biopsies may become rare as photon migration imaging develops into a powerful non-invasive diagnostic tool. Technology and medicine have always been close partners. Diagnostic methods such as x-ray radiography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, and computed tomographies provide incredibly detailed anatomic information in demanding clinical settings. As these technologies progress and become standard-of-care, requirements for new […]

Thermoelectric coolers offer efficient solid-state heat-management options. Thermal management is a key factor in optimizing optoelectronic device performance. Excessive heat compromises the wavelength stability of laser output and increases noise levels in detectors. Thermoelectric (TE) coolers, also known as Peltier coolers, offer effective, practical options for heat management in compact optoelectronic devices such as dense-wavelength-division-multiplexing […]

Advances in sensors, imaging techniques, and software propel remote sensing to the top of its class for environmental monitoring. The world is in constant flux: Everyday there are changes in land use, deforestation, erosion, and the earth’s natural resources. Monitoring such alterations throughout the world would be nearly impossible without remote-sensing technology. In the 1990s, […]

Successful positioning requires an understanding of geometry and positioner constraints. As optical components find their way into increasingly complex setups, designers and researchers are faced not only with the need to know more about optical theory, but also with the need to know more about the practice of optical positioning. Because optical positioners are used […]

Wafer-bonding techniques yield vertically integrated optoelectronic devices. Photonic integrated circuits (ICs) have held the promise that the success of electronic ICs could be transferred to the realm of optics. Unfortunately, this promise has fallen short of expectations thus far. Compared with today’s electronic ICs, which contain millions of transistors on a single silicon chip, the […]

By altering the size and thickness of metallic nanoshells, engineers can manipulate their interaction with light. Joining nanotechnology with optics, a new class of materials called metal nanoshells can absorb selected colors of visible or infrared (IR) light, offering the potential for new applications in thin films and coatings, chemical and biological sensors, and optical […]

The EuroLaser Academy’s educational program replaces lectures and laboratory training courses with electronic delivery. The Internet is changing our world, including the way we deliver education. A multitude of conventional manufacturing processes worldwide, such as high-speed, quality cutting and welding, would benefit from the application of high-power lasers. In order to apply the technology to […]

Photonics companies must follow a plan of preparation, reorganization, and automation in order to thrive in the next economic phase. Technical optics as an old-economy field has turned out to become a new-economy field called photonics. Several industrial nations have recently conducted strategic studies that suggest that the field of photonics bears an extraordinary market […]

In the nano regime, material characteristics are dominated by surface effects rather than bulk material effects, opening up a host of new possibilities. Nanotechnology is one of those buzzwords that gets tossed around a lot yet doesn’t seem to have a clear meaning. “The problem with nanotechnology is that everyone has a different definition,” says […]

Optical design is more than just stringing components together Like the bricks and mortar that hold up a building, optical engineering is the foundation of any system based on photonics. In a photonic system, the key to accomplishing a task is getting the photons where you want them to go, when you want them to […]

Many important commercial applications use ultraviolet (UV) lasers, including microlithography, marking and micromachining, fiber Bragg grating (FBG) fabrication, and medical procedures such as photorefractive keratectomy. One of the technical challenges encountered in the development of these applications has been the volume production of reliable, high-performance, laser-grade UV optics. The UV spectral region begins around 400 […]