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Technology Stocks : Lightwave Logic, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoro who wrote (1659)	7/12/2012 3:13:13 PM
From: Paul Lee	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1811

Seeking a photonics answer Lightwave Logic hopes to hone elusive solution to network glut Faster, cheaper, better. Never mind how quickly new digital devices hit the market, at the end of this day the average consumer expected it yesterday. And the products are only as good as the technology inside and the networks supporting them. Frustrations with so-called bandwidth bottlenecks – technical talk for too much information racing at once through fiber optic lines, slowing down systems – have become commonplace in a society spoiled senseless by digital innovation. Enter Lightwave Logic, a development stage, startup with its eye fixed on what just may be the next best thing for the high-speed, fiber-optic telecommunication and computer industry. At its new lab in Newark, Lightwave’s chemists work in photonics applications for the military, optical computing and in the longer term, telecommunications. The firm is moving toward commercialization within the next five years. At its labs, a $200,000 capital investment is in the works including space reconfiguration and purchases such as a giant “glove box” used to handle materials in an air-sensitive environment, ventilation hoods, chemical synthesis equipment and evacuation systems. The group just hired a full-time organic chemist and had previously secured a $20 million investment from the Chicago-based Lincoln Park Capital Fund. Andrew Ashton, co-founder and senior vice president, said the quest is to use polymers to replace expensive inorganic crystals used in modern day communications. “Organic materials have characteristics that are an improvement over inorganic materials such as increased speed, reduced size and reduced costs,” said Thomas Zelibor, Lightwave’s chief executive officer. “The lab we just opened is part of our overall plan to bring many of the processes internal to our company and reduce our dependence on outside entities to accomplish our tasks.” In modern electronics, commercial utility boxes with copper circuitry for fiber-optic information delivery process an astronomical number of transmissions at any given time. In electronics, electrical interference is a major hurdle. any given time. In electronics, electrical interference is a major hurdle. In the company’s perspective, “We are rapidly approaching a physical limit of what the existing infrastructure can support. … It is increasingly likely that in the future, photons will inherit the primary role as the vehicles of digital information sharing.” Inside Lightwave, amidst shelves of chemicals, latex tubing and Pyrex beakers, a Vortex mixer and eyewash, organic chemists are aiming at discovering new materials for the process of making better optical switches. “The reality is people have been trying to do this for 30 to 40 years, but nobody has cracked the nut,” said Louis Glasgow, the firm’s chief technical officer. “The piece has to work so the real challenge is to make things so good and so reliable that they will last for years to come.” The 10-worker staff at Lightwave is confident they’re on a clear path to commercializing the groundbreaking technology which only a handful of smaller companies are continuing to pursue. Others opted out including DuPont, AT&T and Nortel, which ultimately filed bankruptcy. “People have been pursuing photonics for a very long time,” Ashton said. “It’s proven to be very difficult to do.” The company’s “key intellectual assets” are attributed to its founder, Dr. Frederick Goetz in 1994. While Goetz has retired, the work of Lightwave Logic is moving forward with its scientific staff and the assistance of academic collaborators. Glasgow and Ashton are looking toward collaborating with University of Delaware professors, which explains in large part why Lightwave chose its current location. “(It) was a significant factor in our decision to locate at Delaware Technology Park,” Glasgow said. The original foundation of the tech park was innovation with advanced materials, said Michael J. Bowman, the park’s chief executive officer, whose office is just across the hall from the labs. “Lightwave Logic is a great example of that, as they develop unique polymers for switching proteins instead of electrons, as the next evolution in digital communication and computing,” Bowman said. http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120709/BUSINESS08/307090024/Seeking-photonics-answer?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CBusiness%7Cp&gcheck=1&nclick_check=1