Acal Acquiring BFi Optilas
Oct. 30, 2009
Electronic components manufacturer Acal agreed to acquire France-based electronic and photonic components distributor BFi Optilas for €10 million ($14.7 million) in cash and 2 million shares of stock.
Photon Race Ends in Dead Heat
Oct. 29, 2009
Racing across the universe for the last 7.3 billion years, two gamma-ray photons arrived at NASA’s...
Raytheon Opticals Nab $6.9M
Oct. 29, 2009
The Office of Naval Research has awarded defense contractor Raytheon Co. a $6.9 million, Phase II...
Spintronics Go All-Electric
Oct. 28, 2009
An innovative and novel way to control an electron's spin orientation using purely electrical means has been created for the first time. A multidisciplinary team of University of Cincinnati researchers created the all-electric spin electronics, or spintronics. This new field of research — developed when scientists discovered that transistors functioning by controlling an electron's spin instead of its charge would use less energy, generate less heat and operate at higher speeds — offers one of the most promising paradigms for the development of novel devices for use in the post-CMOS era. "Until now, scientists have attempted to develop spin transistors by incorporating local ferromagnets into device architectures. This results in significant design complexities, especially in view of the rising demand for smaller and smaller transistors," said Philippe Debray, research professor in the department of physics. "A far better and practical way to manipulate the orientation of an electron's spin would be by using purely electrical means, like the switching on and off of an electrical voltage. This will be spintronics without ferromagnetism or all-electric spintronics, the holy grail of semiconductor spintronics."
Nanopillars Demystified
Oct. 27, 2009
The physical mechanism by which arrays of nanoscale pillars can be grown on polymer films with very high precision and in potentially limitless patterns, was realized by scientists at the California Institute of Technology.
Shrimp Eyes That Polarize
Oct. 26, 2009
Mantis shrimp, found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, have the most remarkable and complex...
$7M Hybrid PV Grant for UCF
Oct. 23, 2009
The University of Central Florida was awarded a $7.5 million research grant to study ways to make photovoltaic solar cells more efficient in capturing and converting solar energy into electricity, and less costly to manufacture.
Irish Fund Young Researchers
Oct. 23, 2009
The Irish government awarded €7.9 million (about $11.8 million) to 15 young researchers at seven colleges and institutes in Cork, Dublin and Galway to support their ongoing work in semiconductor optoelectronics, next-generation computer chips and networks, bionengineering, and the Internet, among others.
CEO Arrested for Assault
Oct. 22, 2009
StockerYale CEO Mark W. Blodgett was arrested Oct. 13 for allegedly assaulting the company’s former research and development manager, an act police say was caught on tape by security cameras in the parking lot. Blodgett was charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum fine of $1000, and released without bail pending arraignment next month.
Linear Nanowires Kinked
Oct. 22, 2009
Taking nanomaterials to a new level of structural complexity, Harvard University scientists determined how to introduce kinks into arrow-straight nanowires, transforming them into zigzagging 2- and 3-D structures with correspondingly advanced functions.
Optical Trap Holds Viruses
Oct. 22, 2009
A Spain-Canada research collaboration developed a new method to gently trap, manipulate and study tiny, active objects as minuscule as viruses without inflicting any damage. The team demonstrated that it is possible to use the force of light to hold and manipulate 50-nm particles – something previously considered impossible. Since most viruses range from 10 to 300 nm in size, scientists hope this new method of optical trapping will significantly expand viral research.
Fraunhofer USA Turns 15
Oct. 21, 2009
Fraunhofer USA, the US arm of Germany’s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft applied research lab, celebrated its 15th anniversary in Washington, DC, this week. Today six Fraunhofer centers closely cooperate with top US universities to engineer solutions in the energy, health, coatings, laser, manufacturing, software and entertainment industries.
PV Energy Paths Controlled
Oct. 21, 2009
University of Florida chemists have pioneered a method to tease out promising molecular structures for capturing energy, a step that could speed the development of more efficient, cheaper solar cells. Kleiman’s work focuses on molecules known as dendrimers whose many branching units make them good energy absorbers.
Schott Plant to Add 150 Jobs
Oct. 21, 2009
A contract to manufacture transparent glass-ceramic armor for the defense industry will mean the addition of 150 new jobs by 2010 at its Vincennes facility, Schott North America officials said Tuesday. Schott will invest $7.2 million over the next few years to fabricate the armored windows, selected by Oshkosh to equip its new line of mine-resistant, ambush-protected all-terrain vehicles designed for use in Afghanistan.
Electrons Lured From Graphene
Oct. 21, 2009
Rutgers researchers discovered novel electronic properties in 2-D sheets graphene that could one day be the heart of speedy and powerful electronic devices. The new findings, previously considered possible by physicists but only now being seen in the lab, show that electrons in graphene can interact strongly with each other.
Molecules Made Mini Lasers
Oct. 21, 2009
A new optical microscopy technique squeezes photons out of nonfluorescent molecules to provide 3-D images of living cells and tissues for applications in medical imaging and biological research.
Neuroscience Show a Big Draw
Oct. 20, 2009
Neuroscience 2009, the Society for Neuroscience's 39th annual meeting, provides the world's largest...
Lasers Twist Fly Memories
Oct. 19, 2009
Light has been used to manipulate the memories of fruit flies, allowing them to learn from mistakes they never made and scientists to pinpoint the nerve cells that regulate such actions. The work could provide valuable information about how memories are stored in human brains.
Silicon Chips May Go 'Green'
Oct. 16, 2009
Harvesting optical energy currently lost through heat dissipation in optoelectronic devices could allow them to actually generate more power than they use and help make silicon chips and compound semiconductors more "green," said Sasan Fathpour, assistant professor of integrated photonics & energy solutions at the University of Central Florida's CREOL (College of Optics and Photonics), in a well-attended presentation during Frontiers in Optics 2009.
Road to Exascale Computers
Oct. 16, 2009
Exascale computers, which would be 1000 times more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputers,...
FiO: Notes from the Crucible
Oct. 15, 2009
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I thought. “Whoa.” I had just stumbled across a page on the Frontiers in Optics...
Small (and Big) Talk at FiO
Oct. 15, 2009
The superbig and the supersmall were the subjects of two plenary sessions Monday at Frontiers in...
The Power of Spectra
Oct. 15, 2009
“I have contributed all my knowledge to laser research, yet I still get no RESPECT! But that’s...
A Closer Look at Betelgeuse
Oct. 15, 2009
Two independent teams of astronomers have obtained the sharpest-ever views of one of the biggest stars in the sky – a red supergiant called Betelgeuse. One of the most luminous stars known, Betelgeuse emits more light than 100,000 suns. But it is nearing the end of its life and is doomed to explode as a supernova, a sight that should be seen easily from Earth, even in broad daylight.
Medal Winner Talks Lasers
Oct. 14, 2009
2009 has been a special year of advancements for lasers, and by October 2010 the power of the sun could be ever-so-briefly generated in the laboratory. Those are some of the points made during an address Monday by renowned laser scientist Robert L. Byer during the awards ceremony at Frontiers in Optics 2009.
StockerYale Sells to Coherent
Oct. 14, 2009
Laser, optical fiber and LED maker StockerYale Inc. of Salem, N.H., announced today that it has sold its North American operations to Santa Clara, Calif.-based laser company Coherent Inc. for $15 million in cash and the assumption of some of its operating liabilities.
Nanostrings Serve as Probes
Oct. 14, 2009
New fabrication techniques have enabled the development of on-chip mechanical elements with dimensions on the nanometer scale. Their application, however, has been limited by the lack of sufficiently sensitive techniques for measuring the motion of these tiny devices, until now. A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics said they could show that the optical near-field (the light-field that leaks out of on-chip glass cylinders) can be used as an actuator and sensitive probe for nanomechanical oscillators. This enables measurements that are only limited by the fundamental quantum fluctuations of light.
An Evening at the Races
Oct. 13, 2009
One of the kickoff events for the 2009 Frontiers in Optics meeting in San Jose was the preliminary races of the First International Optical Society of America (OSA) Student Chapter Solar Mini-Car Competition. All competitors were given a solar car kit and told to assemble it and modify it however they wished to optimize the light-capturing efficiency. Competitors "drove" their cars by shining a spot light on the solar panels.
FiO Hot Topics: Hot Optics
Oct. 13, 2009
New types of research that explore breakthroughs in medical imaging, solar power, communications and vision were presented during "What's Hot in Optics Today?" during Frontiers in Optics 2009 (FiO) Sunday. About 100 conference early birds gathered to learn what's hot in biomedical optics; solar technology; information, acquisition, processing and display; photonics and optoelectronics; and vision and color.
A Singular Problem
Oct. 13, 2009
At a plenary session at OSA's Frontiers in Optics, Dr. Andrea M. Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, described a decade of observations using the Keck telescopes and the latest advances in adaptive optics, demonstrating an object at the center with a mass more than four million times that of our sun.
Quantum Signatures of Chaos
Oct. 9, 2009
No one has produced experimental evidence that chaos occurs in the quantum world – the world of photons, atoms, molecules and their building blocks – until now. In a series of experiments, professor Poul Jessen and a group at the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences showed just how classical chaos spills over into the quantum world.
Seeing Inside a Living Cell
Oct. 8, 2009
Electron microscopes are the most powerful type of microscope, capable of distinguishing even...
Machine Mimics Human Vision
Oct. 8, 2009
Human vision is designed to look at the rough outlines of the various objects before examining the details. This improves the speed and accuracy of our image recognition, while machine vision typically performs the task in the opposite manner.
Light Travels a One-Way Road
Oct. 7, 2009
A new magnetic class of photonic crystals developed by physicists at MIT allows electromagnetic waves to flow freely in one direction only, a phenomenon that could lead to photonic devices, such as optical waveguides, with zero scattering loss.
Masters of Light Garner Nobel
Oct. 6, 2009
Three “masters of light” considered the fathers of fiber optics and digital imaging were honored Tuesday with the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Charles K. Kao received half of the $1.4 million prize for his discovery that led to a breakthrough in fiber optics, while the other half of the prize will be split between former Bell Laboratories colleagues Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, inventors of the first successful imaging technology using a digital sensor called a charge-coupled device (CCD), which eliminated the need to capture images on film.
IQE to Acquire NanoGaN
Oct. 6, 2009
Semiconductor wafer maker IQE plc said it will acquire UK-based NanoGaN Ltd for approximately $5.7 million in stock and cash. As part of the deal, professor Wang Nang Wang, CEO of NanoGaN and inventor of its nanocolumn technology, will become chief scientific advisor to IQE.
Femtolasers Aid Space Mission
Oct. 5, 2009
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has helped to establish that femtosecond comb lasers can provide accurate measurement of absolute distance in formation flying space missions. The benefit of such missions is they can gather data in a completely different way to a standard spacecraft – the formation can effectively act as one large sensor.
Graphite Proves Ferromagnetic
Oct. 5, 2009
In what could be promising results for new applications in nanotechnology, such as biosensors and detectors, researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology showed for the first time why ordinary graphite is ferromagnetic, or a permanent magnet at room temperature.
Asylum Orders Surge 60% in Q3
Oct. 2, 2009
Atomic force and scanning probe microscope maker Asylum Research said its orders for the third quarter are up more than 60 percent, driven largely by the introduction of a new high-resolution AFM, the popularity of two MFP-3D™ AFMs and the receipt of its first order from economic stimulus funds.
3-D TV, Bio-optics Hot at FiO
Oct. 2, 2009
The future of 3-D TV, laser fusion and exawatt lasers, bio-optics breakthroughs and illumination-aware imaging for producing better robotic vision are just a few of the hot topics to be discussed during the Optical Society of America's (OSA) Frontiers in Optics (FiO), taking place Oct. 11-15 at the Fairmont and Sainte Claire hotels in San Jose.
Stellar Jet Recreated in Lab
Oct. 1, 2009
Astronomers will tell you that the vast amounts of matter that certain stars stream into space...