Cool Materials: Day 4 of AIO 2015
Arlene Smith, Ph.D.
Peter Horak (Univ of Southampton, UK) spoke about 'Fabrication and Acuation of Nanomechanical Suspended-core Optical Fibres'. Dual, suspended-core optical fibers with MEMS functionality, whose mechanical response can be tailored by scaling dimensions of structure, enable all-optical, all-fiber signal processing. Potential applications include pressure and temperature sensing, switching and nonlinear optical applications.
Patrick Uebel (MPI for the Science of Light, Germany) outlined some 'Scientific and Industrial Applications of Hollow-core Photonic Crystal Fibers'. Benefits of HC-PCFs include high damage threshold, low non-linearity, low latency and dispersion control. Patrick described loss characterization, walked us through the advantages of HC-PCF for certain applications such as UV beam delivery, UV light generation within the fiber core, and the use of UV light in semiconductor metrology. He also shared his experiences of the early stage of transferring this technology to the marketplace, which is at the core of the AIO ethos.
After a much-needed coffee, and a final chance to network, attendees gathered for the last session of AIO 2015, aptly titled 'I Feel the Need for More Optics'. Mika Aikio (VTT Technical Research Center of Finland) detailed his research in a talk on 'Omnidirectional Lens Captures 360-Degree Panoramic Field of View'. Omnidirectional objectives require fewer lens elements than correponding fish-eye designs. Mika considered the design criteria and the typical issues related to this architecture.
Giorgio Giaretta (TAG Optics Inc, USA) spoke about Tunable Acoustic GRIN Lens (TAG) technology, which offers high-speed focusing, high reliability and near diffraction limited performance, with modes of operation such as image stacking and multiplane imaging. Finally, Elfed Lewis (University of Limerick, Ireland) reviewed Optical Fiber Pressure Sensors (OFPSs), used to reduce the footprint of a biomedical diagostic system to a handheld portable size..
And that brings us to the end of yet another Applied Industrial Optics conference. The planning for 2016 has already begun - join us in Heidelberg, Germany July 24-28, 2016!
