How quickly times change. A few years ago, market analysts were intoxicated with the flush of new wealth and declared the new economy unbounded by traditional rules of the market. These wizards of Wall Street informed us that we would have to adapt our rather circumscribed thinking to the concept of an economy with no ceiling and of growth without end.If industry analysts were hoping for a 24-hour version of the economic flu, the December unemployment figures, which jumped from 5.7 to 6...

Until recently, LEDs were best-known as the ubiquitous indicator lights on computers, printers and other electronic equipment. Their small footprint, energy efficiency and long life have posed intriguing possibilities for other applications for many...

The use of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication processes to produce image sensor array chips was first demonstrated in the late 1980s. Since then, the goal of integrating all analog and digital imaging circuits on a single die...

Imaging applications are often limited by low light levels or by lengthy exposure times that inhibit throughput and efficiency. The KAF-3200ME full-frame sensor employs microlens technology that directs the light onto the most sensitive portion of...

Organic light-emitting diodes are the hottest new display technology. Incredibly, it can often take 20 to 30 years to fully commercialize a display technology, but these devices are already ahead of the curve and poised to move into the next phase...

Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. of Irvine, Calif., has produced a phosphor-integrated white LED that emits light at a peak wavelength of 380 nm. Designated the TLWA1100, its color is determined by excited RGB phosphors, offering...

Biometrics isn’t just a good idea. It’s the law, as spelled out in the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 and various other regulations. Passed in May, the law mandates identification based on the measurement of...

Automating photonic device assembly processes can seem daunting. In a typical application, progressive assembly operations such as locating, guiding, gluing and bonding take place in a local region around a static package. The challenge is to...

Researchers in academic and industrial laboratories are harnessing the power of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for use in tunable lasers, optical routers, variable optical attenuators, adaptive optics, displays and other devices.Some of these...

Stuff assorted meat products, salt, potassium lactate, flavoring, hydrologized beef stock, sodium phosphate and sodium nitrite into a casing of ambiguous origin, and you have a preservative-laden hot dog that could probably last for years....

Increasingly inexpensive computing solutions are enabling users to reconfigure their instruments and to manipulate data as never before, overcoming the constraints of hardware to optimize photonic applications. When a photonics problem is too...

Video cameras find use in many automatic inspection applications, from checking the construction of automobiles to scanning microscope specimens for cancerous cells. Often it is important to inspect color as well as other attributes of a product;...

Over the last five years, the optical coating industry has been revolutionized to meet the challenges of producing the dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) filters for telecommunications that separate the wavelength channels used in optical...

For nearly the entire history of modern lens design, engineers have used geometric ray tracing to model light propagation through optical components. This may soon change, however, thanks to the ever-increasing speed of computers.Ray tracing is...

Despite their name, microdisplays are making a big impact, and it’s getting bigger. The size of a computer chip, a microdisplay employs photonics technology to create a magnified image large enough to fill a movie screen or a home theater, or...

The term "crosstalk" describes the phenomenon of power leaking from one channel of a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system into a neighboring one. One of the most important design issues for optical communications systems, crosstalk can...

Despite the downturn in the telecommunications industry, traffic volume continues to grow. Network providers will need additional capacity, and equipment designers must continue to push system limits toward higher bit rates and denser channel...

These short-chain cyclic compounds are linked by oxygen atoms. A characteristic formulation has two to eight aromatic groups, or rings, allowing PPEs to retain their chemical and performance stability against ionizing radiation, thermal excursions,...

The use of plastic optics continues to grow in popularity as optical design engineers discover the many ways these components can manage light. Plastic optical elements and systems appear in a wide spectrum of industrial and medical applications,...

In the fiber optics industry, one constantly hears that new markets will remain elusive unless production efficiency is improved. It is a common goal, therefore, to develop better processes. We propose beam profiling as a scalable improvement for...

It’s no secret that telecommunications carriers are reducing their capital expenditures because of a more competitive landscape. Consequently, these carriers will not necessarily deploy new optical networks. However, they will upgrade existing...

What do inspection machines, camera strobes, airplanes, operating rooms, lasers, extraterrestrials and Broadway stages have in common? They need high-intensity lighting. Xenon lamps have found their way into all of these applications -- except maybe...

Color is a visual cue that we often use to make judgments about our surroundings: Is an apple ripe? A steak fresh? Does this jacket match those pants? For this reason, manufacturers go to a lot of trouble to ensure that a package's colors remain...

When automated inspection became a viable process, engineers concentrated on the camera and optics, the algorithms, the interface hardware and the processor. Only rarely did they pay attention to the lighting system or lighting approach. As...

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) appear to be everywhere these days. They are used in internal and external automotive lighting applications, traffic lights and some information display systems. But these LEDs are really quasimonochromatic light sources...