MAY 12, 2009--BioPhotonic Solutions' femtoFit, a low-cost, compact, commercial pulse shaper, has won the 2009 PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award. According to judges with the Photonic Applications, Systems and Technologies (PhAST) Conference and Laser Focus World magazine, the product "unlocks the power of ultrafast lasers" for medical and other applications. The technology was featured on the cover of the March/April 2009 issue of BioOptics World.
Honorable mentions for the award include a product from TOPTICA Photonics AG with life sciences application.
A second-generation multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) pulse shaping system, femtoFit is one-tenth the volume of the previous technology and twice the speed during automated pulse characterization. Because of the new optical design and components used, the system can be sold for approximately one-third of the price of its competitors and previous systems. These dramatic reductions in price and volume, coupled with an improved software engine and interface, make it accessible to a much wider range of users, which for the first time can include laser manufacturers and manufacturers of instruments that depend on ultrafast lasers, such as two-photon microscopes.
"FemtoFit is an impressive product that is 10 times smaller, three times cheaper, twice as fast, and even more accurate than previous industry offerings," said Gail Overton, PhAST co-chair. "Ultrafast lasers are becoming extremely important in multiple scientific and industrial disciplines. FemtoFit is an innovative tool that eliminates manual laser adjustments, bringing ultrafast technology out of the laboratory and into everyday, practical application."
With femtoFit, a large number of femtosecond lasers can be operated remotely at optimum performance. This is critical for industrial applications and is the reason applications for homeland security and biotechnology are being developed using the femtoFit. Applications for the system include those in biomedical imaging, corrective eye surgery, micromachining and processing, metrology, academic research and development, gem marking, dentistry, sensing of Chemical or Biological Warfare Agents (CBWA) and explosives, fusion energy research, cutting of solar panels and LCDs, terahertz sensing, and attosecond science.
"The Innovation Awards are a great opportunity to recognize excellence in the lasers and electro-optics industry," said Steve Anderson, editor-in-chief, Laser Focus World. "We had a number of strong submissions for this year's awards and are impressed with the advances PhotonXpo exhibiting companies are making in the field."
BioPhotonic Solutions will be accepting this award at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) plenary session on June 1 at 6 pm, and FemtoFit will make its debut at PhotonXpo, the exhibit at CLEO, June 2–4 at the Baltimore Convention Center. The plenary session will also recognize four products chosen as honorable mentions, including at least one with life sciences application:
+ TOPTICA Photonics AG's (booth 1421) iChrome--Ultra-Wide Tunable Visible Laser for Biophotonic Application and Optical Metrology, which the judges acknowledged as a "user-friendly, widely tunable visible fiber laser for fluorophore excitation and other applications in microscopy and spectroscopy."
The PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Awards Program honors the most timely, ground-breaking products in the field of laser science. Entries are evaluated on criteria critical to product success: impact, functionality, life expectancy, effect on the optics industry, innovation and patents or trademarks.
For more information about femtoFIT, see BioPhotonic Solutions' website. For more on the PhAST/Laser Focus World Innovation Award, visit the awards web page.
Posted by Barbara G. Goode, [email protected], for BioOptics World.