Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/266200
P h o t o n i x F e b r u a r y 5 - 7 , 2 0 1 3 1 4 PRECISION GLASS & OPTICS: COMPLETE TURNKEY SOLUTIONS Precision Glass & Optics (PG&O®) is an industry leader in complete turnkey optics solutions. PG&O provides preci- sion and commercial components, thin film coatings, and complete fabrication services. With extensive in-house glass materials and coated substrates inven- tory, the company offers unparalleled fast service with a 48-hour turnaround on a wide variety of optical compo- nents, including mirrors, prisms, win- dows, microsheets, corner cubes, and retro-reflectors. PG&O is also an expert at glass fabrication and assem- bled optics ranging from square, rec- tangular, and circular parts to sophisti- cated and complex shapes. Markets served include: military/defense, bio- photonics, life sciences, avionics, solar, digital cinema, imaging, displays, homeland security, medical and emerg- ing markets. Since 1985, PG&O has been devel- oping specialized solutions for preci- sion and commercial applications glob- ally. From its 18,000-square foot opti- cal manufacturing facility in Santa Ana, Calif., PG&O delivers a broad array of products from flats, prisms, beamsplit- ters, to precision thin film coatings, including dichroic, dielectric and metal. The company's specialized optical thin film coatings operate in the spectral range from 250 nanometers out to 2.5 microns. PG&O is fully equipped to handle many types of custom optics, from prototype through high-volume production. PG&O's quality control (QC) sys- tem utilizes the fundamentals of MIL-I- 45208A as well as the optical manufac- turing disciplines of MIL-PRF- 13830B. The company's quality system is compliant with ISO 9002; PG&O maintains these and other QC prin- cipals to meet and/or exceed customer requirements. P r i v a t e l y - h e l d , PG&O emphasizes high- est quality, durability, flexibility, and cost- effectiveness to meet our customer's strictest deadlines, product specifica- tions and budgets. For more information, visit booth 4332 at Photonics West. After the show, be sure to visit www.pgo.com. MOXTEK'S HIGH EFFICIENCY POLARIZING BEAMSPLITTER YIELDS 10 PERCENT IMPROVEMENT Moxtek® wire grid polarizer technology offers a reliable, highly durable solution to high quality LCoS display technology with a perfect polarization match to the LC imager. Recent improvements in the polarizing beam splitter (PBS) technolo- gy enable a 10 percent improvement in efficiency. PBS Efficiency Efficiency (Tp*Rs) for a polarizing beamsplitter is a measure of how per- fectly a polarizer converts randomly polarized light into (reflected) s and (transmitted) p polarized light. If all of the light is converted, then the beam- splitter would be 100 percent efficient. In reality, some of the light is absorbed, some 's' is transmitted and some 'p' is reflected, reducing the efficiency. The Moxtek standard PBS is typical- ly 81 percent efficient at 550nm wave- length. Recently, with improved manu- facturing techniques and new wire grid technology, this efficiency has been dra- matically improved. Figure 1 shows the improvement in efficiency for the Moxtek High Efficiency PBS (HEPBS) versus stan- dard PBS. This represents a 10 percent improvement. Comparison of Other Technologies An important advantage of the ProFlux PBS over a MacNeille cube is the direc- tion of polarization. A cube polarizes in a direction defined by the orientation of the incoming ray, that is, by the plane of incidence. Because the plane of inci- dence changes as the skew ray direction changes, uniform polarization over a large cone is impossible for a standalone cube PBS. ProFlux PBS, on the other hand, polarizes relative to the direction of the wire grid structure. Rays along the prin- cipal axis, as well as skew rays, are all polarized in the same direction. This has been called a Cartesian polarizer and is a critical quality for good PBS polariza- tion. Using ProFlux PBS polarizers cre- ates improved full screen performance by providing uniform polarization brightness and contrast across the entire angular aperture at the PBS. The ProFlux PBS is now available as HEPBS, providing a 10 percent improvement in efficiency. To learn more about Moxtek, visit booth 4424 and go to www.moxtek.com, or contact a Moxtek representative by call- ing 801-225-0930 or emailing info@moxtek.com. The filters are designed using Reynard Corporation's proprietary ColorLock software to identify the opti- cal layer thickness prescription and sim- ulate a spectral response. The individual constituents are each fabricated to tight thickness tolerances and then bonded together to eliminate internal boundary Fresnel loss. The stacked filter is then finished with high-precision surface quality, sub-wavelength surface flatness and minimal transmitted wavefront error. The result is an optical filter, up to 6 inches in size, which can be utilized over very wide-angle variations, from 0 degress to +/-50 degrees, without any spectral shift (also known as "blue- shift") and negligible loss in transmis- sion. Any perceived loss that does occur is due to a change in optical path length at an increasing angle. Very wide out-of- band blocking is achieved by the inherent absorbing characteristic of the glass, which does not produce unwanted spec- tral harmonics that are often found with dielectric filter coatings. Blocking densi- ties can achieve better than OD10. Thin film coatings are not necessary; however a broad-band anti-reflection (BBAR) coating can be applied to one or both sides of the filter to increase overall transmission. Due to the utilization of specialized filter glass to meet all block- ing and transmission band requirements, Reynard (Con't. from p. 1) the resulting filter is guaranteed pinhole free. ColorLock filters routinely pass the most stringent environmental durability tests such as severe abrasion and salt-fog. Additionally, filters have been tested over MIL-SPEC temperature and humid- ity ranges, without any signs of degrada- tion or delamination. The applications for ColorLock filter stacks are vast, filling in wherever there is a need for color stability and wide- angle imaging such as in machine vision, metrology instruments, and color sens- ing/correction. The filters can be used for laser safety and blocking, as well as for laser clean-up to remove unwanted har- monics or spurious noise. For fluores- cence, these filters can offer high contrast between the peak emission intensity over the excitation intensity. Specific perform- ance values can be customized, or stan- dard values can be defined, such as DAPI, FITC, Alexa Fluor 568, etc. As with all products offered, Reynard offers technical and development support from prototyping through to large vol- ume production. For more information, please email sales@reynardcorp.com, call 949-366- 8866, view the company website at www.reynardcorp.com/colorlock, or visit at booth 314 at Photonics West. PX: Does that mean you have a lot of com- petition? FP: Not really. The products we offer are to a large degree unique. For example, we offer infrared detectors from Vigo System S.A. that are as sensitive as liquid nitrogen- cooled traditional alternatives but use only thermoelectric cooling. We offer ungated single photon counting detectors for the 900 to 1700nm region from id Quantique SA that have no counterpart in the world and we offer photon counting electronics from Becker & Hickl GmbH with time resolution measured in femtoseconds – no commercial product is faster. PX: So who uses photon counting detectors and why? What community do you serve? FP: For photon counting detectors, elec- tronics and instrumentation we serve the scientific community, mostly biotechnology oriented though also quantum physics and even cryptographic research. Our marketing to these users in North America is principal- ly via scientific "workshops" that we organ- ize twice a year. We have just come from our 10th annual "Advanced Imaging Methods" workshop that was held just last week across the bay at UC Berkeley in cooperation with the Molecular Imaging Center there and with Becker & Hickl. The main topic there is time resolved confocal microscopy – we think it is the largest annu- al meeting on microscopy on the West Coast. We have great support from Becker & Hickl who publish excellent information Boston Electronics (Con't. from p. 1) on their specialty, Time Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC) including a comprehensive TCSPC Handbook (now in its fifth edition) and from the user commu- nity, who publishes extensively in the learned journals. PX: Same question for linear detectors. Who uses them and why? What communi- ty do you serve? FP: For linear photodetectors we serve both industrial and scientific communities. These devices become part of larger instruments which are used for detection, measurement and control. On the scientific end, we deliv- er Quantum Cascade Lasers from Alpes Lasers SA which are being used to make measurements of gas and isotope concentra- tions at levels not previously achievable. The current Mars Science Lab exploration vehicle has an IR Detector from Vigo System aboard in the laser spectrometer experiment. On the industrial end we deliv- er low cost thermopile detectors from Heimann Sensor GmbH used to control building ventilation systems and very robust UV photodiodes from SGLUX GmbH used to monitor lamps in UV water purification systems – if the lamp dims too much the bacteria may not be zapped and the cus- tomer will get ill! For more information, visit booth #817 at Photonics West 2013. After the show be sure to check out www.boselec.com, call 617- 566-3821 or 800-347-5445 or email bose- lec@boselec.com.