Sensores

ams OSRAM is reassessing its microLED strategy following the unexpected cancellation of a cornerstone project for its microLED program, the company said in a press release. Discussions with the related customer are ongoing.

Following the cancellation of the project, the company will revisit the future use of its assets related to its microLED strategy, particularly its 8-inch LED facility in Kulim, Malaysia. The company expects to take a hit to its balance sheet in the ballpark of €600 to €900 million (~$650 to $975 million) in the first quarter of 2024.
ams OSRAM's "Re-Establish-the-Base" business restructuring plan named microLEDs as a core area of focus. The company is now reassessing assets related to this field....

On February 1, the biggest North American photonics convention concluded. It was busier than ever, with over 24,000 registered attendees.

Guests once again enjoyed a great reunion for the photonics family, and, beyond a meet and greet event for the community, Photonics West again featured an overwhelming number of events: conferences with thousands of presentations, short courses, four distinct exhibitions (another record), and many, many parties.

Though it is impossible to cover such a wealth of information, a few points topped my personal Photonics West 2024 agenda.

Secondary Sources

The topic of secondary sources has been around for some time. Now, the engagement of one of the biggest players in the laser...

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) supplier Scintil Photonics has integrated III-V distributed feedback (DFB) lasers and amplifiers with standard silicon photonics technology in production at Tower Semiconductor. The integration technology grants opportunities to accommodate integration of additional materials and functions, including lithium niobate and quantum dots, said Sylvie Menezo, president and CEO of Scintil Photonics.

Scintil unveiled its fully chip-integrated 100-GHz DFB comb laser source offering in March 2023. The company said that its continued partnership with Tower positions it for high volume production to meet market demand.

Scintil’s integrated circuits (ICs) are made using a combination involving...

Researchers have developed a biosensor using metasurfaces to detect terahertz radiation, a development which enables early detection of skin sensor. The work is the result of a collaboration between Queen Mary University of London and the University of Glasgow.

According to postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary University, Shohreh Nourinovin, traditional methods of detecting skin cancers are often expensive, time-consuming, and involve CT and PET scans and invasive higher frequency technology. “Our biosensor offers a non-invasive and highly efficient solution, leveraging the unique properties of THz waves — a type of radiation with lower energy than X-rays, thus safe for humans — to detect subtle changes in cell...

Aktiia, a developer of optical health monitoring technology, has completed a CHF 27 million ($30 million) funding round. The company's wrist-worn, 24/7 optical blood pressure monitoring device, which is currently marketed in seven European markets and approved as a medical device in 44 countries, uses photoplethysmography to determine blood volume changes in small blood vessels. The wristbands are calibrated monthly using a conventional blood pressure monitor.

Photoplethysmography is a non-invasive optical measurement technique that uses a light source and a photodetector at the surface of the skin to measure volumetric variations of blood circulation. Since Aktiia's device debuted in the U.K. in 2021, the company has acquired more...

Quantum Science, an infrared quantum dot technology company, has appointed Billy McLaughlin as its first COO. He will be responsible for leading the company’s commercial operations as the business continues development of its proprietary INFIQ quantum dot technology. McLaughlin has more than 30 years’ experience in the semiconductor industry having held roles including managing director at Sivers Photonics as well as senior leadership and board-level positions at SmartKem, Motorola, Global Foundries, and Teledyne e2v.
Billy McLaughlin. Courtesy of Quantum Science.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Optica has named Kenichi Iga as the 2024 recipient of the Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize for his contributions and leadership...

A team at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), in collaboration with Kansas State University, has developed slab waveguides based on the two-dimensional material hexagonal boron nitride. NRL researchers also developed 3D electromagnetic models of the waveguides. The modeling results provide a toolkit for designing future 2D devices that use slab waveguides. The technology has applications in optoelectronics and enables the study of dark excitons.

2D materials are a class of materials which can be reduced to the monolayer limit by mechanically peeling the layers apart. The weak interlayer attractions, or van der Waals attraction, allows the layers to be separated via the so-called “Scotch tape” method. The most famous...

Devices like solar cells, transistors, detectors, sensors, and LEDs are made with semiconductor materials that have charge carriers that are released when the carriers are hit with light.

Determining the transport properties of a semiconductor’s charge carriers can help researchers predict how effective the material will be for an optoelectronics application. Until now, the parameters of the transport properties in minority and majority charge carriers in semiconductors have been determined by using different measurement methods for each type of charge.

To enable efficient, complete characterization of semiconductors, scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) developed a method that records 14 different parameters of...

Metalenz will use Samsung Electronics’ ISOCELL Vizion 931 technology as the image sensor component for its "Polar ID" imaging system. Metalenz offers the solution for facial biometrics. The partnership with Samsung provides manufacturing scale to drive rapid adoption of the technology within the smartphone industry, Metalenz said, adding that Polar ID is under early evaluation with several leading smartphone OEMs.

The imaging system is to specifically combine Metalenz’s polarization-sensitive meta-optic with a derivative of the ISOCELL Vizion 931 image sensor to capture polarized images in the near-IR with advanced global shutter technology. The ISOCELL Vizion 931 achieves 60% quantum efficiency at 850 nm infrared light...

Researchers at CERN’s Antimatter Factory working on the Antihydrogen Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy (AEgIS) have cooled positronium with laser light for the first time. According to the researchers, the achievement could mark the first step towards a matter-antimatter system that emits laser-like gamma-ray light.

AEgIS is one of several experiments at CERN’s Antimatter Factory producing and studying antihydrogen atoms with the goal of testing with high precision whether antimatter and matter fall to Earth in the same way.

The experiment, the researchers said, paves the way for a whole new set of antimatter studies, including the prospect to produce a gamma-ray laser that would allow researchers to...

In the past decades, data traffic has grown exponentially driven by emerging technologies. The field of integrated circuits has enabled that growth, making electronic devices smaller and faster. But the start of the Zettabyte Era in 2016 has pushed the technology to its limits, posing critical challenges in speed, bandwidth, cost, and power consumption. Photonic integration, particularly silicon photonics, presents an opportunity to alleviate those challenges.

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed an integration technique for efficient coupling of III-V compound semiconductor devices and silicon, paving the way for photonic integration at low cost, large volume, and high speed and...

Civan Lasers, a developer of laser technology, has opened its first European office in Hannover, Germany. The office will function as a central hub for sales, service, and R&D, with a focus on welding process innovation. It includes a demonstration room equipped with a 14kW laser with a galvo scanner and a fast axis XY table. The office serves to meet growing demand in Europe. Civan Lasers has opened its first office in Euope, in Hannover, Germany. The office features a demonstration room equipped with a 14kW laser (shown). Courtesy of Civan Lasers.
BRUSSELS — Sensing technologies company VoxelSensors has acquired the intellectual and industrial property of XR glasses developer EyeWay Vision. The acquisition strengthens...

Image scanning microscopy (ISM), a superresolution technique enabled by the advent of fast and compact detector arrays, provides signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), optical sectioning, and spatial resolution better than that of a traditional confocal microscope. The lateral resolution of the ISM image can surpass Abbe’s limit by up to a factor of two.

However, these advantages are achieved by exploiting only spatial information; modern fluorescence bioimaging can be further enriched by time-resolved acquisition, which enables access to structural and functional information encoded into the fluorescence dynamics (e.g., fluorescence lifetime).

Researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa developed a compact...

DustPhotonics, a silicon photonics technology developer for data center and AI applications, has completed an oversubscribed $24 million series B follow-on funding round. The company said that the funding will be used to scale production of current products — namely its Carmel-4 and Carmel-8 products, which are used for 400Gb/s and 800Gb/s applications — and accelerate development of future innovations.
Ronnen Lovinger, CEO (left), and Yoel Chetrit, CTO and vice president of R&D. Courtesy of DustPhotonics.
Dust Photonics debuted its Carmel-8 product at 2023's European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC). As the company aims to advance its merchant 800 Gb/s silicon photonics chip, it also plans to use funds...

Commercial OLED applications such as display technologies require blue emitters that are more stable and efficient. This need has been intensified by newly proposed power-efficient OLED display architectures that only use blue pixels with external fluorescent color conversion layers.

A Durham University team took an unexpected approach to improving blue light emission in OLEDs. The team used sensitizer molecules long considered poor emitters, like ACRSA, to enable brighter, more efficient blue OLEDs. When ACRSA was used as a sensitizer in the new technology, which the researchers called hyperfluorescence (HF) OLEDs, the efficiency of blue light emission almost tripled.

“We discovered a ‘blind spot’ where...

Coherent Corp. CEO Vincent "Chuck" Mattera has informed the company’s board of directors that he will retire as CEO, following the hiring of a successor. The board has retained a leading executive search firm to commence a comprehensive search process, which will include evaluating internal and external candidates, to identify a new CEO. A subcommittee has been formed to oversee the search process.
Vincent Mattera will retire as CEO of Coherent following the completion of the company's search for a replacement. Courtesy of Coherent. Mattera’s intention to retire, the company said, does not reflect a dispute or disagreement. In August 2022, Coherent extended Mattera's contract through 2030.

Mattera has been with Coherent...

An optical metamaterial from Aalto University has the potential to enable applications that would otherwise need a strong external magnetic field to work.

The 3D metamaterial demonstrates an isotropic and resonant nonreciprocal magnetoelectric (NME) response in the visible frequency range. The NME effect, also known as the Tellegen effect, has both electric and magnetic properties. In materials exhibiting the NME effect, magnetization can be induced by the electric component of light, and polarization can be generated by the magnetic component.

The NME effect is negligible in natural materials. However, due to its technological potential, there have been various attempts by scientists to enhance the NME effect using...

Xiaomi and Leica Camera AG have established the Xiaomi x Leica Optical Institute, which the companies plan to use to develop digital imaging and AI technologies for mobile imaging. The institute will lead to the design of ultra-precision optical lenses in a compact form factor, advance performance in computational photography, ensure adherence to optical standards for lenses, and conduct research and develop applications for optoelectronic technology.

Per the endeavor, Xiaomi and Leica have assembled a joint team of over 200 experts. Peter Karbe, the optical designer behind the fourth-generation lenses from Leica including designs like Noctilux and the APO series, will serve as optical expert. Zeng Xuezong, senior vice president of...

The U.S. Department of Commerce will provide $1.5 billion in planned direct funding for GlobalFoundries (GF) as part of the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. GF plans to use the funds to expand its footprint in Malta and to modernize its facility in Essex Junction, Vt.

GF is the first semiconductor pure play foundry to receive a major award from the CHIPS and Science Act.

At its existing Malta, N.Y. fab, GF will add critical technologies already in production in GF’s Singapore and Germany facilities geared towards enabling the U.S. auto industry. The company will also construct a new state-of-art fab on the Malta campus to meet expected demand. The new fab has already been granted some necessary permits and will leverage...

Semiconductor technology company BluGlass Limited has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Tucson, Arizona-based directed energy and laser technology company Applied Energetics. Per the agreement, the companies will collaborate on next-generation military and commercial applications, leveraging BluGlass’ high-performance GaN distributed feedback (DFB) lasers in Applied Energetics’ advanced systems development.
BluGlass has informally partnered with Applied Energetics, a developer of directed energy and laser technology for defense and commercial markets. Courtesy of BluGlass. Through this collaboration the companies plan to develop solutions that address technology needs in emerging dual-use and national security...