Over the last year, Jose Pozo has seen many innovations in the photonics industry.  Innovations in areas including optical telecommunications, photovoltaics, lighting, displays, laser manufacturing, medical optics, machine vision and freeform & micro optics.  Pozo will cover these topics and identify business opportunities for the audience. Areas covered will include:

• Automotive. The automotive sector has seen a huge increase in interest for LiDAR technologies, and the industry has experienced a paradigm shift in the way light is detected through the use of SPADs (Single Photon Avalanche Diodes), which will enable the next generation of integrated LiDAR solutions with the form factor and price that the automotive industry needs.
• Europe’s lead in the micro-optics revolution. New ways of manufacturing freeform wafer-level optics have lowered costs and increased accuracy thereby providing solutions for high volume consumer markets as well as the medical and security industries.
• Mid-infrared range technologies.  There has been an important evolution of mid-infrared range technologies - wavelengths in the 2.5 to 15 micrometre range. In recent years, the historical problem of cost has been overcome by the development of quantum cascade lasers, which are enabling new mid-infrared applications from security to environmental monitoring.
• Medical.  For many years, end-users in the medical sector were difficult to approach by photonics companies, which offered solutions from Raman spectroscopy to hyperspectral imaging. But today, these companies have the tools and a supply chain to speed up the regulatory environment of the medical industry and reduce time to market from 10 years to around 3 years.
• Laser welding. There is a big push to use green wavelengths to make laser welding of copper more efficient. This is exciting because on the one hand we have the laser sector, and on the other hand we have micro optics - and the inspection to actually make it happen.
• Quantum computing. Pozo will discuss quantum technologies for the end goal of quantum computing and for the shorter-term goals of gravimeters and atomic clocks. Of particular importance in this field has been development in single-photon detectors, on which quantum technologies are based.

This presentation will continue at the start of day 2 of the PhotonicsNEXT Summer Summit.

The application of light in several different industries has become more sophisticated as technologies advance. Knowing how the light interacts with its process is now crucial not only in the development of the process, but in the application, operation, and maintenance of the process as well, specifically in more recent times, as Industry 4.0 practices continue to be realized for their worth. For instance, not only is it important for a laser user to understand how the laser source behaves before it is placed into an additive manufacturing system, it is also important to ensure that the laser performs consistently during the relatively longer processing of parts. The technology behind the tools to measure and analyze laser performance has advanced as well. This tech talk will investigate high-power laser welding of copper, laser-based additive manufacturing processes, automotive LiDAR systems, and how performance measurement solutions have helped solve problems in application development as well as laser operation and maintenance.

In the first part of this session, we benchmark Optotune's voice-coil mirror technology against other beam-steering technologies. In the second part, we show how to set up and control our 2D mirrors by software (unboxing).
In the third part, we dive into the various applications such as LiDAR, headlights, FOV expansion, free-space communication, OCT and wind-turbines.
A key focus will be on FOV expansion where we demonstrate how we can take an image with a resolution of 1.5 Gigapixels.

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an interferometric laser-based ranging modality which has dramatically impacted patient care in medical applications, but also has growing recognition as a valuable tool for industrial applications including PCB inspection, additive manufacturing, laser welding, and 3D metrology.

OCT is non-destructive and high-resolution like CT imaging, but more cost-effective.  It is insensitive to external illumination and surface characteristics, unlike photographic approaches.  And it provides both topographic and tomographic (cross-sectional) image data, unlike traditional laser ranging or structured illumination tools.  Fiber optic delivery of the interrogating beam allows OCT to be deployed remotely into harsh manufacturing environments.

Excelitas Technologies provides a flexible and scalable OCT platform through its AXSUN brand of laser engines and data acquisition devices:  simultaneous high resolution, imaging speed, and ranging depth are combined with plug-and-play connectivity, broad scanner compatibility, portability, and low power consumption.

Edmund Optics, global supplier of optical and imaging components, has expanded their laser optics capabilities with the acquisition of Quality Thin Films, Inc. (QTF). QTF, now called Edmund Optics Florida, is located outside of Tampa, Florida and produces a wide range of optical components with high laser damage thresholds and laser crystal coatings from the UV to the far IR.

This facility allows Edmund Optics to further expand its laser optics manufacturing capabilities across crystal and glass fabrication, polishing, metrology, high laser damage and diamond-like carbon coatings, inspection, and testing.

Learn about the exciting capabilities of this facility from Michael Middleton, Operations Manager at Edmund Optics Florida, and James Karchner, Sales Engineer for Laser Optics and Defense Applications.

As products get smaller and smaller, the impact on product development is significant, as the challenge to efficiently and cost effectively manufacture small components increases. Current manufacturing methods such as micromachining, micro molding and lithography add multiple steps, long wait times and are very expensive. Boston Micro Fabrication (BMF) manufacturers micro-precision 3D printers, providing mold-free, ultra-high-resolution fast prototyping and end part capability with 2μm resolution and +/-10μm accuracy. Hear from John Kawola, CEO of Boston Micro Fabrication on how BMF is enabling miniaturization and why manufacturability is no longer the limiting factor in product design.

If you want to understand how selecting the best components and optimizing them to work together can increase data fidelity and instrument throughput. We will cover shaping of light, custom lens designs, source to sensor imaging integration.
You will learn:
Different shapes and illumination roll-offs that can be achieved with multi-mode diode solutions.
Resolution and light gathering power of a high NA objective.
Most important specs to communicate your custom lens need.
How system alignment effects your system depth of focus.
This is an ideal session for Optical engineers, Mechanical engineers, System engineers, and Instrument designers.

The ability to obtain high precision surface and wavefront transmission error metrology using vibration immune methods was clear from the outset.

But what was missing was the depth of analysis and speed of acquisition that would make these techniques worthwhile in environments such as turbulence and vacuum chambers. And to fulfill its promise, dynamic metrology would have to be small and portable. If it's small enough to mount on a robot arm, or be handheld, entirely new applications for surface measurements arise.

This presentation shows how dynamic interferometry works, and how it can be integrated into diverse automation, production cell, and difficult lab conditions.

Vanadium oxide coatings are typically used to create microbolometers in today’s thermal imaging cameras. Ion beam deposition (IBD) is used to create these films, but there are some limitations when it comes to achieving a higher thermal response with this technology. With Denton’s patented bias target deposition (BTD) technology, the thermal response of the VOx coatings can be increased for better performance in next-generation thermal imaging devices. Both IBD and BTD are available in production-ready and R&D configurations to meet demand for new applications in the IR optics market.

Jose Pozo, the Director of Technology and Innovation at EPIC (European Photonics Industry Consortium), continues his discussion from day 1 of PhotonicsNEXT.  He’ll discuss critical trends in the photonics industry in 2021, including advances in the medical sector, laser welding, quantum computing, and more.

Zemax Chief Technology Officer Sanjay Gangadhara will sit down with Justine Murphy to discuss his thoughts on the evolution of the manufacturing industry and the increasingly important role of optics and photonics in this space. Many of today’s challenges arise from tighter manufacturing requirements arising from products and systems that are becoming smaller in size. For many such systems optics can offer a valuable solution, but there are important considerations to be accounted for. In many applications, structural and thermal loads can have a significant impact on product performance, and it is critical to account for those impacts during the design and manufacturing process.

As manufacturers seek better ways to reduce waste, improve quality and increase production yield, they turn to optical sensing methods including spectroscopy to achieve success. From an assessment of incoming material to understanding more about a process, industrial customers seek a common language to communicate their unique problem to suppliers with the tools and know-how to craft a custom solution. In this presentation, we’ll explore the challenge of taking modular spectroscopy tools, building them into industrial-grade solutions, and then integrating them into industrial settings with limited modification for a specific problem.

The trend of miniaturized micro-devices is growing at an unprecedented rate. However, the fabrication of micro-components is still a challenging task - a high need for innovation and development of non-conventional techniques has emerged. In this presentation, you will learn the recent novelties in precision micromachining and how to reach the best possible results. It will review possibilities in focal line engineering, Geometric Phase optical elements for beam shaping, advanced 5axis micromachining, and more.

Choosing and defining individual filter performance for superior spectral compatibility with other filters in a set or optical system
• Guaranteeing catalog and custom filter spectral specifications
o Precise spectral edge placement as a performance-driving option
o New Kola Deep metrology capability with deeper UV-to-NIR OD measurement capability
Optimal alignment of catalog and custom filter sets for best performance in an optical system
• Demonstrate use of SearchLight, free web-based tool for simulating and analyzing filter set behavior,  including the optical characteristics of excitation and detection components
Awareness of cost drivers for custom optical filters can help control total filter cost

Our new FACTOR Series of high-power diode laser pump modules offers the highest efficiency and best reliability for pump wavelengths at 88x, 793 and 976 nm. The 88x wavelengths are a perfect tool for efficient DPSS laser pumping whereas the 793 and 976 nm wavelengths are specifically designed for Thulium and Ytterbium fiber laser pumping, but all of them can be used for thermal applications as well. Learn in this webinar about the benefits of this new FACTOR series and how to take advantage of these when integrating into your application.