• Stefan Vorndran

    Phone: 508-832-3456

    Stefan Vorndran is VP of marketing at PI (Physik Instrumente; Auburn, MA).      

    Irina Shibanova/1210633001/Getty Images
    FIGURE 1. By the end of the decade, 100,000 satellites may orbit Earth.
    Stefan Vorndran
    Oct. 28, 2024
    Highly precise fast steering mirrors are essential to keep the optical signal between satellite transmitters and receivers aligned to ensure stable and efficient communication...
    FIGURE 1. Aligning parts that have become misaligned because of stress, creep, or settling processes is an application for active shims, when submicron or even nanometer precision and stability are required.
    Mathias Bach
    Nov. 1, 2018
    Because of the down-to-nanometer-range resolution of their piezo elements, active shims cover applications in precision engineering and alignment of optical components.
    (Courtesy of PI)
    FIGURE 1. Silicon photonics couplings often deviate from clean predictable Gaussian coupling cross-section. Profiles of this sort cannot be reliably optimized with traditional alignment algorithms. Otherwise, the optimization risks locking onto one of the local optima rather than the global optimum. This can be efficiently achieved by performing an areal scan of the target area, thereby mapping the coupling cross-section across its full extent. A piezo-based scanner can achieve this in fractions of a second.
    Scott Jordan
    Oct. 13, 2017
    To make silicon photonics devices profitably at scale, automation subsystems require alignment processes that support steps from device characterization at the wafer level to ...