About This Webinar
Hair-thin strands of glass, intrinsically transparent and strong, connect today’s world in ways that were unimaginable even 20 years ago. Over the past 50 years, glass optical fibers have advanced from passive low-loss conduits for light to active light-amplifying hosts to a myriad of nano-to-macro-structuring of core-clad combinations. John Ballato of Clemson University discusses this history as a looking glass into the future of optical fibers and its symbiosis with light to address the question: What can the next 50 years bring?
Who should attend:
Optical fiber designers, engineers, manufacturers, and R&D scientists who are interested in the history and future applications of optical fibers. Those who utilize detectors, electronics, displays, lasers, and spectroscopy in industries such as telecommunication, aerospace, agriculture, automotive, medicine, environmental research, and energy.
About the presenter:
John Ballato is a professor of materials science and engineering at Clemson University where he also holds the J. E. Sirrine Endowed Chair in Optical Fibers. He has published over 500 technical papers, primarily on optical fiber materials and properties. Among numerous other honors, Ballato is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America, OSA), the International Society of Optical Engineering (SPIE), and the American Ceramic Society (ACerS), as well as an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors.
About the sponsors:
Fibercore is a provider of specialty optical fiber solutions for precise sensing and control in demanding and harsh environments. Over the past 50 years they have contributed to monumental changes in technology and its impacts on people and society. They supply polarization-maintaining, erbium-doped, and bend-insensitive single-mode fiber along with multimode, rare-earth doped, photosensitive, and cladding pump fibers.
LUMATEC specializes in high-performance optical technology. Their story began in 1973 with the innovation of the first flexible light guide for high power laser radiation, thereby sparking the development of several medical laser applications. A couple of years later, in 1976, the company gave birth to the Liquid Light Guide: a flexible light guide with a very large diameter without the limitations of fibers and fiber bundles. The first large scale application was about curing composite dental fillings with UV light. In the following years, the Liquid Light Guide portfolio was expanded with three new series to focus not only on UV light but to cover the spectrum from UV to NIR, enabling a variety of applications like lithography, curing of adhesives, fluorescence microscopy, dermatology, endoscopy, and many others in which factors like homogeneous large cross-section, high transmission from UVC to NIR and high aperture are important. Today Lumatec provides not only Liquid Light Guides but also superb UV and multispectral light sources that serve customers well in non-destructive testing (NDT) and forensics. The specialty lighting components, systems, and solutions of the German supplier set industry standards and help customers generate, transmit, and apply light for specialized applications.