Recently in Photon 08 Category

By Tim Hayes at Photon 08

Photovoltaics (PVs) has been a frequent topic of conversation among the delegates here at Photon 08. Today, Ben Robinson of Dulas Solar and Stuart Irvine of Glyndwr University described the business economics of the sector here in the UK.

Not surprisingly, politics is also involved. The German and Spanish governments have initiated a feed-in tariff, rewarding PV installers for that part of the power generated which is returned to the national grid system. The result has been huge take-up of domestic solar power; in Spain PV installations grew by 480% in 2007.

Currently the UK lacks such a tariff, but Irvine read between the lines of the politicians' words on the subject. "A feed-in tariff is officially 'under review'", he said. "But the government won't be able to resist the pressure for long. The country's PV industry is potentially strong, with many elements of the PV supply chain heavily represented here, and the need for a tariff to promote PV take-up will only get stronger."

Robinson agreed, pointing out that recent developments in available PV systems have brought the cost per kWp down drastically in recent months. "Some utility companies are now hinting at a feed-in tariff on their own, even without government assistance," he commented. "Some version of a tariff is inevitable here. And essential."

By Tim Hayes at Photon 08

Sandi Wilson of the UK's Photonics Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) embarked on the daunting task of surveying the available roadmaps for photonics and related technologies, pointing out that it can be very easy for companies to get bogged down in the sheer volume of predictive data available in a growth field like photonics.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is only limited consensus among the available roadmaps, and even the ones covering closely related topics can arrive at quite different conclusions.

To try and help, the Photonics KTN has written a Streetfinder report, an attempt to map out the roadmaps. It collates the available reports and their various conclusions into one place, along with the identity of their authoring organisations - not always obvious at first glance.

"Roadmaps are only as relevant as the people who get together to write them," said Wilson. "Hopefully we can help direct readers to the documents they really should read, and avoid the irrelevant ones."

By Tim Hayes at Photon08

Following on from the roadmap presentation, more information about the future came from Thomas Pearsall of the Paris-based European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC).

His organisation has just completed a comprehensive survey of how emerging nanotechnologies will affect photonics industries, a task that took more than two years to complete.

MONA (Merging Optics and NAnophotonics) identifies flat-panel displays, photovoltaics, imaging and lighting to be the four sectors where the influence of nanotechnology will be strongly felt.

For each sector MONA provides not only timelines and predictions, but also indications of risk and reward for companies thinking of exploiting the markets. And there are certainly risks.

"What's happening now in photovoltaics is nothing less than a revolution," Pearsall said. "But is this a bubble? I think the answer is probably yes. I'm seeing financial projections based on photovoltaic facilities not even built yet that extrapolate as far into the future as 2012. That smells like a bubble to me."

Do you think the current surge in photovoltaics is a bubble? When OLE spoke to Steve Eglash back in January this year, he said "No". But have things changed as 2008 has progressed?

By Tim Hayes at Photon08

"The diffraction limit no longer exists." Not in far-field fluorescence microscopy at least, according to Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany.

He demonstrated developments in stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED) which can achieve resolutions beyond the normal limit predicted by the Abbe equation. His approach has been dubbed far-field optical nanoscopy.

"The strategy is to exploit selected states and transitions of the fluorescent markers in these experiments, so as to neutralise the limiting role of diffraction," Hell commented.

He expects far-field nanoscopy to enter virtually every cell biology laboratory in the near future, a testament to the fact that even well established physical laws don't necessarily last forever. "Abbe was not wrong," Hell said. "He just couldn't have known what was coming."

By Tim Hayes at Photon08

Over in today's Industry Technology Programme, there was a keen discussion about funding and commercialisation of new technology. Ashley Evans of the UK's Electronics KTN demonstrated the Fundmap website, created to help SMEs navigate their way among the 3000 different funding schemes, grants and financial initiatives available to them in the UK. SMEs can search by several criteria, including technology area, location, or position in their development cycle. Try it out at www.fundmap.co.uk.

Rob Rule of the IP Group, which specialises in developing and investing in UK university research, explained that the modern model for investment in academic research is driven strongly by issues, rather than technology - a change from the way things used to be, when it was the technology itself that was the key. No surprise then that IP Group's successful spin-outs include companies active in water science and bioscience, and that cleantech is a big part of their work.

Rule did sound a note of caution to academics looking to commercialise their work, however. "Many of the 70 or so projects we look at and assess each year are thrown out instantly," he said. "That's not because they are weak, but because the academics have compromised their own intellectual property, often by publishing it. Once the IP is compromised, we simply would not touch it."

Clearly the commercialisation of academic research is a tricky area to navigate, and not to be attempted without some knowledgeable guides.

By Tim Hayes at Photon08

Fujimoto: "OCT is on its way to becoming an accepted clinical methodology"

Photon 08 kicked off with a plenary talk from James Fujimoto of MIT, US, who described the current state of the art in optical coherence tomography (OCT). "OCT is on its way to becoming an accepted clinical methodology," he said.

Fourier domain analysis has already opened up new applications for the technology, and now high-speed high-resolution OCT is becoming a reality. "Fourier domain modelocked swept-source OCT can allow a 20 kHz sweep, and capture 20 images per second," said Fujimoto. "That's ten times faster than conventional OCT could manage, rapid enough to see transient biological processes and cell development in action."

The latest machines can acquire 3D data from a subject in less than a second, which is about the same length of time it took to obtain 2D OCT data not that long ago. Combined with advanced data processing, the result can be 3D graphical representations of animal organs and biological systems, a point Fujimoto proved with an OCT-generated movie of a trip through a rabbit's colon - quite a Fantastic Voyage.

By Tim Hayes

Photon 08 kicks off at the Edinburgh Conference Centre on the campus of Heriot-Watt University next week, and optics.org will be there.

As you would expect from the UK's largest optics conference, there is a lot going on, including:

Optics and Photonics 2008, the biennial conference of the Optics and Photonics Division of the Institute of Physics.

QEP-18, the latest in the series of conferences initiated in 1973 by the Quantum Electronics and Photonics Group of the Institute of Physics.

An Industry Technology Programme with sessions of particular interest to those in the optics industry.

Plus an exhibition of the latest optics and photonics technology.

Photon 08 runs from 26-29th August, and I'll be there to report from the show and bring you the latest news. If you're attending, visit IOP Publishing at Stand 40 and say hello.