Rande: I have read much about LPTHA, but this article really pinned my ears back. Everyone should read and re-read it.
ingersoll-rand.com
Baton
Excerpts:
<<"For 30 years, major companies tried to figure out this technology and make it work commercially. I led the effort that succeeded," says Danziger, who renamed her company LightPath Technologies, Inc. to market the breakthrough.
Danziger's team took glasses that had different formulations but similar physical qualities and layered them together in a specialized mold. The glass sandwich was then placed into a high-temperature diffusion furnace and processed for a specified period of time. "Cooling it down properly is also a key part of the process," adds Donald Lawson, president and chief executive officer of LightPath. However, Lawson will not reveal other important procedures of the proprietary production technology, which is protected by 14 patents--with 12 additional patents pending.
Each Gradium lens also can be designed to contain the properties of a number of conventional optical glasses. This allows a single spherical lens to perform more complicated "multi-element lens system" functions. "Take any type of an imaging system, such as a camera or binoculars," says Lawson. "These systems are generally made up of anywhere from one to 20 elements [lenses]. When our material is designed into these products, we can cut down on the overall number of elements. We can't go from 15 elements to one, but we can take 15 elements in some applications down to 12. This makes the system lighter. Fewer elements can also let us make the system shorter, and with fewer elements we can help our customers cut costs."
The advantages offered by Gradium lenses are attractive to many manufacturers. The ray-bending lens can be used in high-powered microscopes, endoscopes, and other medical imaging systems, as well as scanners and photocopiers, high-definition televisions, night vision systems, and lasers for laboratory and industrial use. The material also can manage light in optical storage equipment for computer data and optic fibers.
Looking for burgeoning markets to enter, LightPath executives focused on developing products for the telecommunications market. These days, the belief in the telecommunications industry is that bandwidth is like closet space--you can never have enough. As part of the effort to exponentially increase the traffic able to be sent through a single optical fiber, scientists developed a way to split laser light into 8, 16, 40, or more different colors--each able to carry as much data as the original signal. To serve as data "traffic cops" and combine these multiple light streams into a single optical fiber, telecommunication companies began installing a technology called wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). By going the WDM route and cramming multiple wavelengths through existing fibers, telecommunication companies can give excellent service and pocket more profits. The benefits of WDM are fueling a boom in which overall spending on the technology is expected to grow from $100 million in 1995 to $12 billion by 2005, according to Electronicast Corporation of San Mateo, CA.
To capture a share of this fast-growing market, LightPath and Invention Machine Corporation of Boston, MA, formed the joint venture LightChip, Inc. The Salem, NH, based company is working on integrating Gradium lenses into next generation WDM systems. In September 1998, LightChip received $5.25 million in funding commitments from AT&T Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of AT&T. Following the investment, LightPath retains a 23 percent stake in LightChip.
Neal Douglas, managing partner at AT&T Ventures, says the investment in LightChip reflects "our belief that, because of the unique ability of Gradium lenses to manage the photonic stream, LightChip can be an early, significant participant in the market."
Gradium lenses also can be used to bring beams of light into sharper focus at the ends of optical fibers. Single mode fiber collimators--a device that collimates, or lines up, a light beam symmetrically and minimizes insertion loss and back reflection where two optic fibers meet--are "ubiquitous in fiber-optics assemblies," says Lawson of LightPath. The company recently began selling collimators featuring Gradium lenses. Within 3 years, LightPath executives estimate they'll have a $20 million share of the $65 million collimator market.
As LightPath finds new applications for its gradient lenses, Danziger hasn't forgotten what she originally set out to do: design a better solar concentrator. In 1998, LightPath and D-R Technologies Inc. of San Diego, CA, delivered to the U.S. military a prototype of the first Gradium solar concentrator. It's being field-tested now. Produced under the second phase of a government contract monitored by the U.S. Air Force Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base, NM, the lenses are designed to help channel sunlight to the solar cells that power military satellites. The technology could lead to a new generation of more powerful, longer lasting commercial space satellites.>> |
