Chiral Photonics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (May 2008) |
Chiral Photonics, Inc. is a photonics company based in Pine Brook, New Jersey, founded in 1999. The company is developing a new class of optical devices based on twisting glass optical fibers. By componentizing the medium itself and leveraging optical fiber’s benefits that include transmission efficiency, robustness and ease of integration, these in-fiber devices aim to displace bulk optics with a new family of photonic “building blocks” that includes lasers, filters and sensors.[1]
The company hopes that its manufacturing process which is completely automated and scalable will result, for example, in communications lasers that at fraction of the cost are three times more efficient than today’s semiconductor lasers.[2] Chiral Photonics is also developing chirality in polymeric thin films which, for instance, would enable high quality projection displays.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Funding
As of 2008, Chiral Photonics had received funding from venture capital, angel, and government sources including a $2 million National Institute of Science and Technology Advanced Technology Program award in 2004.[3]
[edit] Technology
Chiral Photonics’ technology is an outgrowth of the 1997 discovery by two of the company's co-founders, Azriel Genack and Victor Kopp, that lasing in cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) films is a result of their unique self-assembling helical (chiral) microstructure.[4] Drs. Genack and Kopp decided to pursue the possibility that CLCs, with their natural chiral structure, could provide a platform for a versatile new class of photonic devices. Chiral Photonics has abstracted and mimicked the self-assembled structure of CLCs to produce related optical devices using tiny lengths of twisted fiber. Designing novel microforming towers, the company is able to fabricate devices based on fibers that can be twisted through more than 25,000 revolutions over a one inch length. While the underlying theoretical photophysics is not fully understood at this time, the density of twists per inch, or periodicity, demonstrably results in the light being coupled to the fiber cladding, scattered out of the fiber, or reflected back within the fiber. This interaction with light can be harnessed to produce sensors, polarizers and filter/lasers, respectively.
These basic components can be utilized for a variety of applications and all share a common production platform. In his comments upon the grant’s award, William Sargeant, the National Science Foundation program officer who oversaw Chiral Photonics first SBIR award, noted the range of existing and incipient markets. "This technology could be one of the most significant recent advances in the field of polarization and wavelength control. There is an enormous host of applications for which chiral fiber gratings could find markets.”[5]
[edit] Patents
Chiral Photonics has been issued 19 United States or International patents relating to its photonics research.[6]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Chiral Photonics Product Line. http://www.chiralphotonics.com/Web/default.html, Company Website.
- ^ “Chiral Photonics brings a new twist to optical devices, lasers”, http://www.smalltimes.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?ARTICLE_ID=269439&p=109 , Small Times, 2004-05-10.
- ^ “Development of Chiral Grating Technology for Advanced Fiber Laser”, http://jazz.nist.gov/atpcf/prjbriefs/prjbrief.cfm?ProjectNumber=00-00-5659 National Institute of Standards and Technology Website.
- ^ “Low threshold lasing at the edge of a photonic stop band in cholesteric liquid crystals,” http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?id=62754 Opt. Lett. 23, 1707-1709 (1998).
- ^ “A New Twist on Fiber Optics”, http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100404&org=NSF National Science Foundation Website. 2004-07-01
- ^ Chiral Photonics Patents. http://www.chiralphotonics.com/Web/patents.html Company Website.
[edit] External Links
- Official website of Chiral Photonics, Inc., http://www.chiralphotonics.com/Web/default.html
- NSF Animation, http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_videos.jsp?cntn_id=100404&media_id=51273&org=NSF
