Photonics Dictionary: I

A thermoplastic or thermosetting material used to hold an object fixed and keep it from deterioration. In microcircuitry, the process of imbedding is known as potting.

A closed vessel with electrodes of different potentials that is used to determine how much ionization took place in a gas after its exposure to x-rays or radioactive emissions.

An image intensifier, also known as an image intensification tube or image intensification device, is a specialized electronic device used to amplify low-light-level images to make them visible to...

Term synonymous with refractive index liquid, but related more to tank or chamber immersion of crystals, fibers, lenses, photoelastic models, etc.

Qualitatively, the inverse of the amount of velocity produced by the application of a sinusoidal force to a system; therefore, if velocity is high, impedance at that point is low. Quantitatively,...

An unbounded quantity, an indefinitely large number. Infinity is commonly expressed by the symbol ∞.

Instantaneous field of view (iFOV) is a term commonly used in the context of remote sensing, imaging systems, and optical instruments. It refers to the specific portion of a scene that an optical...

A type of laser for which a large number of the components can be fabricated in or upon a single substrate.

The internet of things (IoT) refers to a network of interconnected physical devices, vehicles, appliances, and other objects embedded with sensors, actuators, software, and network connectivity....

Ion-beam sputtering (IBS) is a physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique used for depositing thin films onto substrates. It involves bombarding a target material with a beam of energetic ions,...

A type of radiation detector that depends on the ionization produced in a gas by the passage of a charged particle through it. One of the best known is the Geiger-Müller counter, although cloud...

Also known as the Bragg spectrometer. A system used for the x-ray analysis of crystal structure. In the instrument, a homogeneous beam of x-rays is directed on the known face of a crystal and the...

One of a number of nuclides characterized by an identity between their mass numbers, but each having a different atomic number.