Recently by Marie Freebody

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

Thursday 08.00 PT: Photonics West sees plenty of new exhibitors every year and 2009 is no exception. Lithography specialist Nanoscribe is a case in point. According to CEO Martin Hermatschweiler, Nanoscribe was founded in 2007 as a spin-off from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the federation of the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) and the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.

"We were at several other exhibitions last year such as CLEO/QELS, ASCB, Hannover Messe and some other minor exhibitions, but this is the first time Nanoscribe has come to Photonics West," he told optics.org.

The company develops and manufactures compact and easy-to-operate laser lithography systems, which allow for three-dimensional micro- and nanostructures in various commercially available photoresists.

"We use highly reliable and stable femtosecond fibre lasers," said Hermatschweiler. "This makes our laser lithography systems truly turn-key systems at an affordable price."

The laser writing technique is based on a nonlinear effect known as multiphoton polymerization. By tightly focusing the light of an ultrashort pulsed laser, the intensity is sufficiently high to cause a chemical and physical change in the photoresist. By moving the sample relative to the fixed focal position, arbitrary paths can be written into the material.

Another newcomer to Photonics West is Shasta Crystals, US. Founded in 2006, the company develops platform technology to produce small crystals of various materials. Gisele Maxwell, CEO and co-founder, says that the decision to attend the exhibition this year is to gain customer traction and advertise for the products that it is already making and that are ready to sell.

"Our current focus is nonlinear optical (NLO) crystals for the display markets such as televisions, miniature front projectors and cell phones," said Maxwell. "These NLO crystals are used as frequency doublers to make visible lasers and generate the three colours (red, green and blue) required by high-resolution display manufacturers."

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

Osram intends to develop a range of red, green and blue emitters for projection applications

Thursday 07.00 PT: Osram is showcasing its blue laser diode (pictured left) at its booth (#1883), the first in a line of blue, green and red laser diodes the company intends to develop for compact laser projection applications.

"We hope to be the first company to offer both green and blue laser diodes," said Sevugan Nagappan, Osram's product marketing manager of infrared laser products. "Our blue laser diode will be ready for volume production in April or May 2009 and we hope to offer a green version by the end of this year."

The 450 nm GaN blue laser diode delivers an output power of 50 mW with a threshold current of just 30 mW. "The low threshold means that the diode is very efficient," commented Nagappan. "The slope efficiency is around 0.9 W/A."

Perhaps the most crucial aspect is the laser diode's height. Standing at just 3.2 mm high, the blue diode is claimed to be the smallest to date, enabling it to be embedded into consumer products such as cell phones, digital media players, digital cameras and Netbooks.

"While the biggest market for our tiny light sources is in consumer projection devices, the blue laser is also suitable for automotive applications such as head-up displays and industrial line-scanning," concluded Nagappan.

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

Chrial Photonics is developing a range of devices based on twisted glass optical fibres

Chiral Photonics, US, is putting a new twist on optical fibre design as I found out when I visited its booth today. According to Saul Felman, the company's business development manager, fabricating optical devices based on twisted glass optical fibres improves the fibre's transmission efficiency, robustness and ease of integration.

The company hopes that its manufacturing process, which is completely automated and scalable, will result in communications lasers that are a fraction of the cost and three times more efficient than today's semiconductor lasers.

"We are developing the first all-fibre high-power isolator which tackles some of the price and robustness issues challenging current high-power isolator designs," said Sheng Zhang, senior scientist at Chiral Photonics. "We are also developing chiral polymeric thin films which, for instance, would enable high-quality projection displays."

On display at the company's booth (#6810) is an optical fibre polarizer (pictured), which is claimed to be the only flexible version available on the market.

With around 30 patents for its chiral fibre structures, Chiral Photonics is certainly putting a new spin on in-fibre photonics.

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

Photovoltaics is the market everyone is talking about at Photonics West

Tuesday 15.30 PT: "Solar energy is on the cusp of reaching grid parity in the next few years and by 2011 gigawatt-scale solar production will be a reality," announced Eric Wesoff in today's hot topics discussion. Wesoff is senior analyst at Greentech Media and has spent his career following the growth and technology trends in the photovoltaic market.

Photovoltaic technology is enjoying high growth and substantial investment due to worldwide focus on the long-term importance of renewable energy. Today the market is valued at $20bn, and is predicted to grow at a rate of 30% per year. Even in the current economic climate, Wesoff expects the market to grow by 25% in 2009.

Many technical challenges remain, however, including efficiency, reliability, cost per watt and commercialization. "For example, a couple of years ago the cost per watt was around $10," commented Wesoff. "By 2011, this should fall to around 75 cents per watt, at which point things will start to become very interesting."

The photovoltaic market offers venture capitalists big opportunities to invest. In the last three years, around 200 new VC-funded companies were created, which some industry sceptics say resembles the telecoms bubble of the late nineties. Wesoff disagrees. "The key difference here is that there is a clear end-market for this product," he said.

Without a doubt, the solar market continues to be a major topic of discussion at Photonics West. Perhaps with President Obama's recent call to reduce US dependence on oil, the country is now in a position to pave the way to cleaner energy.

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

Tuesday 10.00 PT: Visitors swamped the exhibition hall as soon as doors opened at 10am. I stopped by the Lockheed Martin Aculight booth (#1434) to speak to Rob Afzal, vice president of research and development, to find out about the company's latest pursuits.

A new thrust to the company's research is to combine the beams of multiple fibre lasers to create a single very high-power beam. The latest product, which is not yet available, is a high-power green laser based on frequency-converted laser technology.

"We are very excited about this product, which will probably be announced officially sometime next year," said Afzal. "Our green laser emits an average power of 70 W, at a repetition rate of 5 MHz. What's more, the device does not require water-cooling, resulting in a compact air-cooled system."

Applications that the company hopes to target with its high-power green laser range from medical and materials processing to military.

It's still too early to gauge the mood on the exhibition floor, but Afzal hopes that this show will be as successful as the BiOS exhibition, where he said the company was able to pick up many good quality leads. Watch this space.

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

Mitsubishi's talk on green lasers for TVs attracted a big audience

Coming second in Time Magazine's Top 10 gadgets of 2008 is quite an achievement. But then so is developing the elusive, highly efficient compact green laser for the first laser-based commercial TV. It was little surprise then that seats were scarce in Mitsubishi Electric's invited talk delivered by one of the developers, Takayuki Yariagisawa.

Released in October, 2008, the company's ultrawide-colour-gamut, high-contrast HDTV has a staggering 65 inch screen with only a 255 mm depth and power consumption of just 135 W.

According to Yariagisawa, the red and blue laser light sources were already available, but a high-power green laser diode had yet to be invented. "For the red and blue sources we used a 640 nm AlGaInP laser diode developed for DVD writers and a 455 nm GaN LED developed for Blu-ray," he explained.

For the green laser diode, Yariagisawa and colleagues opted for a planar waveguide structure, since this approach offers the ability to scale up the power. Other advantages include efficient laser operation and high gain with high-density pumping. A thin waveguide is also insensitive to cavity loss compared with thicker waveguides.

The biggest problem facing the group was developing a compact and low-cost green laser diode. "We fabricated a thermal lens array with an Nd:YO4 planar waveguide," explained Yariagisawa. "To reduce the device cost, we introduced a new wafer process that is suitable for mass production."

The resulting laser measures just 2.25x1.2 cm and emits a maximum output power of 11.4 W at a pump laser diode power of 27 W. An optical efficiency of 42% and electrical efficiency of 21% is achieved.

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

It seems that an ever-growing number of laser makers are turning their attention to the immense potential of fibre lasers. Ultrafast fibre-laser specialist IMRA America outlined just some of the reasons why these lasers have caught the imagination of the optics industry in a technical conference earlier today.

Delegates hear all about IMRA's ultrafast fibre lasers

According to Gyu Cheon, IMRA's vice president of technology development, ultrafast fibre lasers offer key advantages over solid-state lasers, such as simpler assembly, automated operation and longer lifetime. "However, there are improvements that still need to be made that currently limit the technology," said Cheon. "These include wavelength tunability over a broad range, extreme short pulse and energy emission."

To improve the technology, engineers at IMRA are focusing on two parameters that they consider to be the most important - intensity and dispersion management.

So watch this space for further developments in ultrafast fibre lasers from a company that seems intent on bringing the technology to a wide range of applications. "Ultrafast fibre lasers are very promising for real-world applications ranging from micromachining to particle deposition, from packaging of microelectronics to dermatology," concluded Cheon.

By Marie Freebody, Technology Editor, Optics & Laser Europe magazine and optics.org

It's my first visit to Photonics West and I find myself struck by the sheer scale of the event. Although the main exhibition doesn't kick off until tomorrow, there is still plenty on offer for visitors, including technical conferences, short courses and plenary sessions.

Delegates enjoy a break from the technical conference

A technical conference that caught my attention this morning was delivered by volume-holographic-grating (VHG) maker Ondax, US. In an invited talk, the company's CEO Christopher Moser explained how a simple laser-diode configuration leads to wavelength tuning over 2 nm with less than 10% laser power loss and 40% VHG diffraction efficiency.

The motivation for the new design was to lower packaging costs by achieving accurate alignment of the VHG for frequency-narrowing laser arrays, and to increase the reliability of the diode by relaxing the alignment tolerance of the VHG.

The novel set-up comprises a laser diode, collimating optics and the VHG. "By simply adding a highly reflective coating to the heat sink of the diode, the laser output can be reflected back into the laser cavity, which removes the angle dependency of the grating," said Moser. "Now the wavelength can be varied by changing the angle of the VHG."

So far, the company has achieved a tuning range from 974 to 976 nm by rotating the grating over an angle of 0-6 degrees.

By Marie Freebody

Martin Goetzeler, CEO of Osram Opto Semiconductors, Germany

I was lucky enough to speak to Martin Goetzeler recently and gained some interesting insights into his opinions on the global photonics market. As well as running one of the world's leading lighting manufacturers, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, Goetzeler is also the president of Photonics21, a technology platform that aims to bring together European photonics professionals.

"We expect the 21st century to become the century of photonics, which means that it is very important to bring the photonics community together," said Goetzeler. While it is a bold statement, it is clear that he is not alone in the view that photonics is going to play an increasingly crucial role in the global market in the years to come.

Viviane Reding, European commissioner for information society and media, recently said, "Photonics is driving innovation in Europe." This statement is based on a recent photonics study, which was carried out at the end of 2007 by Photonics21. The study predicts that for the period 2005 to 2015, the global photonics market will experience an annual growth rate of 7.6%.

According to Goetzeler, the key markets in which he expects to see significant improvements in the next ten years are industrial manufacturing, lighting and projection systems, biophotonics, and optical networks.

For those of you working in these sectors, do you agree with Goetzeler and Reding? Do you see your business booming in the coming decade or are there other fields that are being overlooked? Are we really living in the century of photonics?

By Marie Freebody

Did you see the partial solar eclipse?

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was eagerly anticipating the partial solar eclipse, which was visible from the UK last Friday morning. I happened to be at home in the usually sunny seaside town of Bournemouth, but was hugely disappointed to find a very grey and overcast sky prevented me from observing this special event.

A lucky optics.org reader fared much better, however, and sent us this great snap of the partial eclipse from Devoran near Falmouth, Cornwall. Clive Cassey took this image at 10:03am at the greatest occultation. Clive used 10 x 42 binoculars to project a 30mm diameter real image onto card, which he captured using his 3Mpixel digital camera.

I'm sure Clive wasn't the only optics.org reader lucky enough to have snapped the eclipse, so if you have any pictures of your own please do send them in.

If, like me, you missed the partial solar eclipse, then you can look forward to the next big celestial event - the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on Tuesday 12th August.

The Perseid meteor shower is an annual event that has been observed for more than 2,000 years. Although the best time to look is during the dark hours before dawn on Tuesday, if you can't wait until then why not stop by Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, UK for its Perseid Meteor Shower party this Saturday.

A barbecue and a night time sky show - what could be better?

If you do manage to take any pictures of the meteor shower, then please send them in to us at marie.freebody@iop.org

Could an optical technique used every day in laboratories all over the world help to answer the fundamental question of are we alone in the Universe? A team of scientists from the US and the UK certainly hopes so. The group believes that its laser fluorescence equipment can be made to withstand the harsh environment on Mars to search for life on the planet.

The researchers propose that the system could operate on any Mars lander or rover and be made ready for launch in just five years. The key challenge they face is to make the instrument light enough to be flown, and resilient enough to survive the cold, -120°C Martian nights.

Michael Storrie-Lombardi and Jan-Peter Muller, of the Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the UK are carrying out experiments both in the laboratory and at Silver Lake in California, US - a well-known Mars analogue study site. "Being able to test the fluorescence signal both under laboratory conditions and in the field has been critical in ensuring the system will work on the surface of Mars," said Muller.

The approach uses ultraviolet fluorescence to illuminate soil and rock in search of tell-tale signs of life. In particular the group is searching for chemical compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are believed to be one of the earliest forms of organic matter in the Universe. And, just like living organisms, PAHs fluoresce when excited by ultraviolet light.

"While using fluorescence to illuminate organic material has been carried out for decades, light sources were too large and unwieldy to use for a robotic mission to another planet," said Storrie-Lombardi. "However, new generations of LEDs, which are very small, reliable and energy efficient make this possible."

"Placed on a Mars rover, one of these LEDs positioned a few centimetres from a target can easily provide enough light to produce fluorescence in small PAHs," Storrie-Lombardi added. "But even more encouraging is the very recent development of a small 375 nm laser diode that can illuminate geological layers and crevices high up on otherwise inaccessible rock outcrops."

The tool is ideal for initial surveys as it requires no sample preparation, does not destroy sample material and requires only electrical power to operate, conserving precious water and other consumable resources for sister instruments.

If you want to find out more about this work, the team has just published a paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

A robot snake that can slide around narrow and intricate pipes checking for leaks along the way may sound far-fetched, but that's exactly what scientists in Norway are working on.

Cybernetic experts are joining forces with optical scientists at SINTEF to develop an inspection robot that will be able to move in pipes of various diameters, right down to 20 cm.

The group is building on the experience and knowledge acquired with previous snake robots called Anna Konda and AiKo. Now, it is developing an intelligent pipe inspection robot on wheels that will be able to climb, navigate intersections and at any given time know its location in the pipe system.

"We want to develop a robot with 10 or 11 joint modules, each with an identical pair of wheels cast in plastic," said Jens Thielemann, from the Optical Measurements and Data Analysis department at SINTEF. "The robot will function as a train when operating horizontally. Such robots already exist, but we want to develop a robot that can climb too."

A time-of-flight camera will provide the robot's vision, allowing it to navigate and move forward on its own. "The robot knows when a left or right turn is approaching and also contains a built-in path description detailing what tasks it should carry out in different situations," added Thielemann.

When the robot enters a vertical pipe, it will lift its head to meet the wall. It can then either move sideways with its abdomen against the pipe and twist itself upwards or it can topple backwards, attach itself to the pipe wall and roll upwards.

The scientists emphasise that the project is at the design stage but hope to demonstrate a prototype model by the end of the year. The final version of the robot will be constructed of aluminium and measure 1.5 m in length.

Digital Dash's RTD

Adding to the list of in-car gadgets that take our concentration off driving, comes news of a multi-touch interface designed to provide drivers with a futuristic digital dashboard. The Digital Dash Reconfigurable Tactile Display (RTD) is said to be the world's first multi-touch interface that incorporates physical controls with a curved display surface.

The system uses a rear projector unit designed by Osram Opto Semiconductors to display images such as audio controls and maps of other indicators, including images that interface with knobs, buttons and faders, on a display/control surface. A CMOS camera detects touch contact, knob rotations and button movement at the display, which eliminates the need for wires and electrical components. The RTD could be used to control functions such as heating, air-conditioning and rear parking cameras.

The visible projected image in the Digital Dash RTD is powered by Osram's Ostar-Projection LED light sources. In addition, Osram's IR Dragon IR emitter floods the display area with IR light, allowing the CMOS camera to sense the position of the controls or the user's touch on the screen.

According to Osram, the display is well-suited for use in automobiles, sound-mixing boards, video editing, industrial, military and home control use and any other control- and image-intensive user interface applications.

"The touch screen market understands the benefits of RTD technology and we are working to bring this next generation of innovation to the market through the advancements in high power and efficient visible and infrared solid state light sources," commented Tom Shottes, president and CEO of Osram Opto Semiconductors. "With Digital Dash's technology, the futuristic screen designs we see in forward-thinking concept displays can now be a reality."

As we may one day find ourselves happily jabbing at images on our dashboard to adjust the radio, air conditioning and navigation system, I can't help but wonder if we will need another gadget to drive the car.

Do you have a unique way of walking? Researchers at the S.J College of Engineering in India seem to think so. They believe that we all have our own individual gait that makes us easily recognizable. The group is so convinced by this idea that it has developed a gait recognition system, which it believes could improve security surveillance at airports, military institutions and banks.

The technique uses a camera to capture a key set of frames over a person's complete walk cycle. The sequence could then be compared with a database by airport security to recognize suspects before they even enter the airport concourse. Comparing such data with CCTV footage may also help to track suspect terrorists or criminals who may otherwise be disguising their features or carrying forged documents.

The researchers emphasize that gait recognition has significant advantages over more well-known biometrics, such as fingerprinting and iris scanning in that it is entirely unobtrusive and could be used to identify an individual from a considerable distance. "The ability to identify a possible threat from a distance gives personnel a longer time frame in which to react before a possible suspect becomes a real danger," the researchers say.

The approach works by capturing side view images of a person as they walk. The images are converted into silhouette form and analyzed, together with height measurements and the periodicity of the gait to classify the walk.

So far, the team has carried out initial tests on 20 people walking in a straight line at normal speed and stride, back and forth in front of a video camera. The researchers found that recognition performance of the system was sensitive to changes in viewing angle above ten degrees but was reasonably robust even when the individuals changed walking speed.

The shape of things to come in the computer world will be anything but flat, predicts Roel Vertegaal, a professor from Queen's University, Canada. Thanks to Vertegaal's work on flexible displays at the university's Human Media Laboratory, we could one day see computers integrated into almost any object.

"We want to reduce the computer's stranglehold on cognitive processing by imbedding it and making it work more like the natural environment," said Vertegaal. "It is too much of a technological device now, and we haven't had the means to truly integrate a high-resolution display into artefacts that are curved, flexible and textile, like your coffee mug."

Current work includes developing computers that can take the form of foldable paper allowing users to navigate a document by turning the pages. The group is also developing an interactive computer on a Coke can, which can display video on its surface and respond to touch.

Recent advances in computer technology have allowed inventors to move beyond the rigid, rectangular design of current devices. Developments in touch input technologies now allow for any surface to sense two-handed, multi-finger touch. Advances in flexible displays that use OLEDs to form electronic paper or E-Ink means that displays can be rolled up and put inside a pocket, like regular paper.

Another development, known as Kinetic Organic Interfaces enables computers to adjust their shape according to some computational outcome or through interactions with users. Vertegaal hopes that this will yield 'Claytronic' 3D displays capable of showing pictures as well as physical shapes in 3D.

So perhaps one day we will look back on a time when we used to flick through an ordinary newspaper while sipping coffee from a mug - that is just a mug - and wonder how we ever managed?

LED lights up
roads on campus

Academic institutions would always rather spend their money on high-tech kit rather than mundane things like lighting. Now a programme launched by US LED manufacturer Cree offers universities a way to save money and protect the environment by switching to LED lighting.

The LED University program is an international community of universities working to accelerate the adoption of energy-efficient LEDs. So far, four US universities have joined the LED initiative - North Carolina (NC) state, Marquette, University of California Santa Barbara, Arkansas - while Tianjin Polytechnic in China has also signed up to the initiative.

According to the US Department of Energy, 22% of all the electricity used in the US powers lighting. The hope is that the deployment of LED lighting will reduce energy usage, protect the environment, reduce maintenance costs, and provide a better quality of light for improved visibility and safety.

Each of the participating universities is conducting feasibility studies to determine the cost and environmental benefits of switching to LED lighting in campus applications. The University of California Santa Barbara has installed 23 LED streetlights on a campus road and reports that, compared to its traditional streetlights, it is achieving a 44% reduction in energy use as well as better light distribution and colour rendition.

Other installations include recessed lighting in the chancellor's office and a dormitory in NC State University, while the University of Arkansas has installed the first set of what it plans will be approximately 1700 recessed LED lights in university buildings. Meanwhile, Tianjin Polytechnic University has installed 1500 LED streetlights designed by its graduate students on the campus' main roadway.

"Lighting is a significant energy drain worldwide and if we can significantly reduce the amount of energy used for lighting, we will make a dramatic contribution to protecting our resources and environment," said Pingjuan Niu, a professor at Tianjin Polytechnic University. "Tianjin Polytechnic University is proud to be among the first to join this important lighting and energy conservation initiative."

"The world optoelectronics market will surpass $1.2 trillion by 2017." That's the staggering prediction made by Steve Anderson, chief editor of Laser Focus World (LFW) in this afternoon's industry perspectives seminar.

Based on LFW's 2008 market review and forecast, the optoelectronics market gained about 7% in 2007 to reach $620 bn, and the predicted annual growth rate is around 7.7%. The main contributor to this growth comes from components, which was worth $350 bn in 2007 and is expected to reach $675 bn in 2017. The biggest drivers for this growth are flat-panel displays, which has a predicted growth compound growth rate of 7.4%.

Looking specifically at lasers, the world market was worth $6.9 bn in 2007 with diode lasers taking a 55% market share. Anderson cites the biggest trend driving growth as miniaturization, followed by the development of new wavelengths, faster pulses and greater beam delivery options.

In terms of laser sales, the three largest sectors are materials processing applications, which in 2007 were worth $1.3 bn, followed by telecoms at $1.7 bn and optical storage at $1.6 bn. "The telecom laser market exceeded the optical storage market for the first time since 2001," said Anderson. "This is largely due to the huge growth of fibre to the home that we have seen recently."

Living in the US, Anderson is all too aware of the current financial uncertainly the country is experiencing. "Device manufacturers are cautious about new investment due to shaky consumer confidence," he said. "This has a knock-on effect to component manufacturers. An indication of this is the news that AMD, a major device manufacturer, announced major lay-offs this year due to the drop in demand for chips."

But it's not all bleak, with the global laser market forecast to grow by 7% in 2008 to reach $7.4 bn. Green photonics, such as photovoltaics - and especially thin-film photovoltaics - also represents an excellent opportunity (see earlier entry for more details on the photovoltaic market). The optical storage market also recovered from a 15% decline in 2006, growing by 7.7% in 2007 to $1.60 bn mainly due to blue diodes used in Playstation 3 games consoles, Blu-ray discs and HD DVD players.

Another area to watch is bio-optics, particularly diagnostics and imaging technique such as optical coherence tomography (OCT). According to Anderson, the medical therapy market is predicted to grow by 10% to reach $614 m.

Could the off-cuts from fish be the next breakthrough optical material? James Grote from the US Air Force Research Lab certainly thinks so, as he presented his research into the optical applications of waste fish at Thursday morning's hot topic seminar.

"Where silicon is today's fundamental building block for inorganic electronics and photonics, biopolymers hold promise to become tomorrow's fundamental building block for organic photonics and electronics," he said.

His approach uses the DNA derived from waste salmon caught in Hokkaido in Japan, and there's plenty of it - 10,000 tons/year to be exact. "DNA from this biowaste is abundant, inexpensive and green," said Grote. "It has the potential to compete with, or maybe someday even replace, fossil-fuel based plastics for applications ranging from eyeglasses to LEDs, transistors and solar cells."

The fish is first prepared in a series of processes, including breaking down the skeleton, removing the protein, decolourization and freeze drying. During this process the DNA maintains its double helix structure and can be doped with various other polymers to enhance certain optical properties.

"With careful doping, the biopolymer demonstrates low optical losses of less than 0.5 dB/cm over a broad wavelength range, electrical conductivities 3-10 orders of magnitude higher than other polymer materials, and they are tunable," said Grote.

So far, Grote and his colleagues have made the first all-DNA electro-optic (EO) modulator, which exhibits lower losses compared with current polymer EO modulators, and operates at significantly lower power. The group has also demonstrated the first red, blue and green bio-organic LEDs and the first bio-organic field effect transistor.

Much work still has to be done before these DNA-based polymers can compete with inorganic optical materials, but Grote is optimistic that his research is taking the first important steps towards creating biopolymer-based solar cells, LEDs and lasers.

At Michelson Diagnostics' booth they believe that more is definitely better - for optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging anyway.

The EX1301 OCT microscope uses four laser beams focused at different depths to provide double the lateral resolution of competing technologies.

A laser beam with a wavelength of 1300 nm can be brought to a focus of around 20 µm over a depth of focus of 1 mm. However, by using four lasers centred around 1305 nm, the beams can be brought to a lateral focus of better than 10 µm over a depth of focus of 0.25 each, providing a total focal range of 1 mm.

The microscope could provide clearer real time images offering more clinical detail and is designed to see within excised tissue such as skin or complete organs without causing damage.

This robotic companion has an artificial optical skin, which can detect touch and respond accordingly. Probo is so clever that it can differentiate between different types of touching such as tickling, poking, slapping and petting and reacts with the appropriate facial expressions and noises.

The designers hope that Probo could be used to comfort hospitalized children who often have long periods in quarantine conditions where a real pet would be inappropriate.

The flexible skin-like foil was created by the Polymer Chemistry and Biomaterials Research Group at the Universiteit Gent, who teamed up with the Robotics and Multibody Mechanics Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, both in Belgium. The 'skin' is composed of optical fibre sensors embedded in flexible silicon, which is supple enough to allow the robot to move, but strong enough to protect the fibre from damage (against slapping presumably).

Plastics are conventionally thought to be unsuitable optical materials compared with glass because of their poor quality. However, Koike's research at Keio University in Japan seems to go someway towards challenging this assumption. Koike has developed a highly scattered optical transmission (HSOT) polymer for LCD backlights that exhibit almost twice the brightness of conventional backlights.

The design takes advantage of the scattering effect that occurs when light hits particles with a diameter in the order of micrometres. By adjusting the size of the dopant, Koike found that the direction, angle and intensity of scattering could be controlled. "By injecting a dopant that scattered light at right angles to the surface, we have forced forward scattering only, which has almost doubled the brightness," said Koike.

The HSOT polymer can already be found in a range of laptops including the Sony Vaio, Panasonic Let's Not, Samsung and Dell.

"OLED lighting could be the fastest way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions," said Peter Visser in this morning's industry perspectives seminar on multimedia, displays and lighting.

Visser is the project manager of OLLA - a €21 million European project that aims to develop flexible OLEDs with colour changing options in the next five years. OLLA is made up of 24 partners, including 10 from industry (such as Philips and Osram), and Visser believes that commercial interest in OLEDs for lighting applications will tap into a very valuable market.

"The lighting market is currently worth €58 billion Euros, of which lamps make up 25%, the rest are fixtures, electronics and controls," said Visser. "OLEDs offer a very efficient alternative to lamps, they contain no harmful substances, can produce high quality light -with a colour rendering index (CRI) of over 80 and require an operating voltage of only around 3 V."

Visser believes that OLEDs also offer many potential future options such as flexibility, varying colour and full transparency. The OLLA project hopes to develop a 30x30 cm white tile with a lifetime of 10,000 hours, efficiency of 50 lm/W, brightness of 10,000 cd/m², and a CRI greater than 70 to compete with existing light sources.

To achieve these goals, the group is investigating various materials and processes, and is also looking into lower cost solutions such as fabricating OLEDs without costly indium tin oxide contacts. "So far we have achieved small OLEDs, which are suitable for decorative or signage applications," said Visser. "But in the future we hope to integrate OLEDs into many applications in the home, the office and in vehicles."

Visser painted a very bright future (quite literally) - predicting OLED ceilings in the home that emulate beautiful blue skies during the day and red sunsets at night, OLED wallpaper, OLEDs within glass shower screens, furniture and advertising and in the control panels of cars.

Much hand-waving and gesturing can be seen at Fraunhofer's booth today as its "Free 2C kiosk" invites you to move a projected 3D object with your finger, without touching the screen.

How does it work? Two cameras at eye-level detect the position of your eyes in order to project the correct 3D image from your viewpoint. A row of LEDs at the base of the screen illuminates your hand with infrared light. This light is reflected back down to two infrared cameras, which open and close at the same frequency as the LED pulses. This information is fed into a computer, which determines the exact position of your hand and updates the display accordingly.

Future systems from Fraunhofer will allow you to use two fingers to expand/ reduce the size of an image or rotate it. So watch this space for even more frantic gesturing!

New to this year's event is the industrial perspectives programme, designed to provide market perspective into various application areas. Kicking off the photovoltaics session was Gaeten Rull from the market research firm Yole Developpement.

Rull believes that photovoltaics will become a competitive energy source by 2015, thanks to multi-billion investments by many solar cell manufacturers. "From the 25MW fabs of the past few years, we expect to see gigawatt fabs within the next few years," he said.

Growth has been slow in the photovoltaics market due to the lack of availability of polysilicon but, according to Rull, this is about to change as more money is spent on silicon production. This will boost the manufacture of silicon wafer-based cells, which are typically expensive to make because of the costly raw materials used.

New projects and investments in thin-film manufacturing and III-V cells are also expected to boost the photovoltaic market. "III-V cells are not just used for military and space applications anymore," said Rull. "We are starting to see them used for terrestrial communications applications also."

According to Rull, the key players remain the same, but rival companies are beginning to emerge. "Sharp enjoyed the largest solar cell production capacity in 2007, with 15% share of the market," he said. "Interestingly, the Chinese company, Suntech Power jumped from seventh to third in 2007 with a 6.3% share of the market."

Alongside commercial investments, Rull added that much research and development is being carried out all over the world with the aim of increasing solar cell efficiency.

Could this device be just the answer to Heathrow's lost luggage problems? That's the thought that struck me during this morning's optical and digital image processing conference, which presented a smart camera for postal sorting applications.

The smart camera can acquire and process information such as bar codes on envelopeswithin milliseconds and, according to Julien Dubois from the University de Bourgogne in France, could replace conventional PC-based postal sorting systems.

Developed in joint a joint partnership between the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and the University de Bourgogne, the design combines a CMOS camera, FPGA interface and processor boards.

"Think of the smart camera as an intelligent sensor," said Dubois. "It can process 30 letters per second at speeds of up to 8.0 m/s compared with the old system, which can process only 15 letters per second at speeds of 4.0 m/s."

Not only is the camera faster, but it is also more compact than the original system and requires much less power.

Dubois believes that although processing time is similar to the old system, at 40.88 ms, the use of a co-processor allows for image acquisition and processing tasks to take place in parallel. Use of CMOS sensors allows a region of interest to be selected, which also helps to speed up the process overall.

A total of 1190 people have registered for the event, and I think I must have been travelling in with most of them as the trams were bustling this morning. According to Amy Nelson, SPIE Europe's press relations manager, hundreds of papers from countries all around the world are to be presented in 17 technical conferences, while a total of 151 exhibitors will be on hand to show off their latest products and innovations.

"We are very happy with how the event is going so far," said Nelson. "There is a great energy here, the programme has attracted some big names in the field and technical attendance has increased by 10% from the last event in 2006."

New to this year's event is the Industry Perspectives programme, which is designed to provide a series of executive briefings covering key technologies and sectors. Also on offer this year is a careers workshop designed for students and early career professionals. The workshops will discuss the pitfalls, opportunities, challenges and skills required to succeed in the photonics industry.

The organizers hope that Photonics Europe will be seen as a uniquely pan-European event that enables research and industry to be brought together to share expertise. "We think that this event allows the people who have the ideas to meet with the people who can implement the ideas," said Nelson. "With full attendance at the plenary talks and Industry Perspectives programme, we believe that this is a good indication that people are very interested in this kind of meeting."

You may be as surprised as I was to learn that despite Strasbourg being the seat of several European institutions such as the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, the only direct flights from the UK are from London City Airport.

So after battling across London to reach the airport, it was extremely refreshing to arrive in Strasbourg to find an efficient tram and bus network servicing the entire city. Within 30 minutes I had reached my hotel and was settled in, making final plans for the talks and exhibitor stands that I will be visiting tomorrow.

As I prepare my schedule, I find myself spoilt for choice with a long list of conferences on offer on topics ranging from semiconductor lasers and silicon photonics to metamaterials and photon management. The conferences are supplemented by a series of special events, including a packed industry perspectives programme, the photonics innovation village, and plenary sessions.

If you have any tips on what not to miss, please feel free to use the commenting tool or stop by our booth #312 to let us know.

Welcome to optics.org's exclusive online resource dedicated to the forthcoming Photonics Europe conference and exhibition, which kicks off this week in Strasbourg.

Over the next few days I will endeavour to bring you some of the latest optics and photonics research from an event that promises to bring together different disciplines, technologies and perspectives from across Europe and around the world.

So make sure you remember to check back here for regular postings about the event. For those of you who are attending this year, why not stop by booth #312 to meet the optics.org team. If you need more incentive to search us out, - how about a free laser pen when you sign up for optics.org or our sister magazine, Optics and Laser Europe? Sign up is free and the pen is available for all qualified sign-ups.

On show at the Fraunhofer IOF booth is a new vibration-compensated mini-projector that could be integrated into mobile hand-held devices. A spokesperson at its booth (B2 261) told me that that every mobile phone maker is interested in this technology, and Fraunhofer hopes that the device will be integrated into all mobile phones by 2010.

The mini-projector will allow a user to project images directly from their mobile phones, as well as from poratble hand-held projectors. The device could also be used as a head-up display in cars, and could be integrated into games consoles.

The prototype on display at the Fraunhofer's booth is a monochrome and full-colour projection system with 640x480 pixels, but the organization hopes to make 800x600 pixel displays in the near future. It incorporates an inertial measurement unit that detects and compensates for any small movements, which is particularly useful for hand-held devices.

The projector also houses an electronics system that converts a digital signal into an analogue signal. This signal is then projected by laser beams onto a 1 mm diameter deflecting mirror, which in turn projects the image in a TV-like scan. The mirror oscillates in two perpendicular directions at an angle ranging from -10 to + 10 degrees to produce the image.

This research was carried out in collaboration with Fraunhofer IOF and IPMS.

Knee implant

A newcomer to the exhibition this year is EOS, which is demonstrating a range of fascinating products fabricated using its FORMIGA P100 laser-sintering system. On show at booth B3 646 is a set of dentures made by the company's laser system, as well as turbine blades and vehicle exhausts. According to a spokesperson from EOS, its list of customers includes Boeing, Toyota and Formula One.

EOS, which was founded in 1989, starts its fabrication process with a CAD design that is fed into the laser system software. The system then builds the plastic or metal product in a series of powder layers. In the case of plastics, a 30 W CO₂ laser sourced from Synrad is used to solidify layers of 0.1 mm, while for metals one of IPG's fiber lasers is used to solidify layers of 0.02 mm. The machine can build up to a height of 580 mm in a matter of hours.

Dental applications

EOS currently has a strong presence in Europe with 400-500 machines in operation. The company is now hoping for similar success in the US, having installed 40 machines across the country since launching there three years ago.