The June 2020 issue of Laser Focus World highlights a wide variety of emerging technologies, applications, and new products. For example, in our cover story this month, we discuss how laser sources are being used to shed light on immune and cancer cell interactions, advancing diagnostics and therapy by integrating novel laser ablation and mass cytometry to enable spatial resolution of single-cell phenotypes (see article). Then, we look at microLEDs—which are sized to be individual display pixels—and the recent developments that could soon position them to be the dominant display technology (see article). Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media, explains the difference between LED emitter size and pixel pitch; the controversy over definitions of microLED and miniLED technology; and the exploding number of ways one can singulate, package, and assemble LEDs into displays.
Next, Scott Jordan, Head of Photonics at PI (Physik Instrumente), discusses alignment for silicon photonics manufacturing. The article describes evolving piezoelectric control technology that addresses the need for accurate, nanoscale alignment during probing (prior to packaging), testing (during packaging), and the packaging process itself, and explains how a fully parallel gradient search that simultaneously aligns multiple couplings, multiple degrees of freedom, and multiple channels allows alignment of many optical junctions in parallel, reducing manufacturing time and costs (see article). We also showcase a superpolishing method for laser optics that eliminates detectable subsurface damage. Jayson Nelson and Shawn Iles of Edmund Optics describe a technique that achieves extremely low surface roughness (less than 1 Å RMS), which is frequently specified for applications requiring increased optical and energy efficiency such as applications in the UV, ultra-low scatter, and high-power laser systems (see article).
Then, Jeff Hecht updates us on what’s going on at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (see article), and finally, we have an interesting article from Ara Nefian of the NASA Ames Research Center that details the design of a laser-based, virtual bumper used to detect hazards for planetary surface navigation (see article). As always, I hope you enjoy this issue.
John Lewis | Editor in Chief (2018-2021)
John Lewis served as Editor in Chief of Laser Focus World from August 2018 through October 2021, after having served as the Editor in Chief of Vision Systems Design from 2016 to 2018. He has technical, industry, and journalistic qualifications, with more than 13 years of progressive content development experience working at Cognex Corporation. Prior to Cognex where his articles on machine vision were published in dozens of trade journals, he was a technical editor for Design News, covering automation, machine vision, and other engineering topics, for over six years.