News Briefs (Jan. 26, 2006)

Alfalight Inc., a Madison, Wisc., maker of diode lasers, announced it achieved 22 watts of continuous wave (CW) output power from a 975-nm wavelength single-stripe multimode diode laser operating at 25 degrees C -- a 47-percent improvement over the previously reported highest value of up to 1-micron wavelength. The company said its development team improved both the power conversion efficiency (PCE) and the device's characteristic temperature (T1) to attain 22 watts of CW output power, using a 100-micron single-stripe chip bonded p-side down to copper. At a 25 degrees C heatsink temperature, the devices roll over thermally and do not suffer from catastrophic optical mirror damage, it said. The peak PCE of the device is 68 percent. Alfalight's development efforts are sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Super High-Efficiency Diode Sources (SHEDS) program. High-performance, high-power laser diodes are a component of systems including diode-pumped solid state (DPSS) lasers, fiber lasers and optical amplifiers. Products using new technology will become available in late 2006, Alfalight said. . . . Essex Corp. announced it has completed testing its radar advanced optical processor (AOP) at a federal laboratory. Testing involved the verification of processor interfaces and operations and of the advanced waveform quality produced by the AOP. The tests were the last step before field testing the AOP, which is an ultrawide-bandwidth optoelectronic processor that enables increased radar resolution and "threat assessment," Essex said. Its development started under various federal government awards with the goal of developing a real-time radar imager that supports advanced waveforms with an open architecture and with applicability to many types of radar systems. . . . PerkinElmer Optoelectronics announced Wednesday that Visopia, a Los Angeles advanced lighting design company, selected its high-power RGB LED, all-color ultrabright LED (Aculed), as part of an innovative lighting system for Mazda's Kabura 2006 concept car. Visopia used Aculed's multichip-on-board design to create a five-element headlamp, including high-beam, low-beam, accent light, turn signal, fog lamp and side mirror turn-indicator lights in the concept car. Visopia's Aculed-based design for the car car was unveiled at The 2006 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) last week in Detroit. Perkin Elmer Optoelectronics, based in Fremont, Calif., develops digital imaging, specialty lighting and optical detection technologies for health and industrial science markets.