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The development of the pixelated polarization camera is enabling dynamic interferometry, a new metrology technique that is insensitive to vibration and suits use in an industrial environment.
Improvements in interferometry have made it a powerful and attractive technique for characterizing tiny devices based on microelectromechanical systems.
The advent of three-dimensional optical metrology has brought many benefits to industrial quality control of aircraft engines, according to the turbine-blade manufacturer GE.
Previously regarded as a laboratory method for the characterization of metal alloys, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy is now showing great potential for field-based environmental monitoring and biohazard analysis.
Conventional optical technologies store data on the surface of a recording medium. Two-photon technology, which relies on overlapping light beams, can be used for three-dimensional multilayer storage and promises capacities of up to 10 Tbyte on a DVD-size disk.
Holographic data storage is poised to change the way we write and retrieve data forever. After many years of developing appropriate recording media and optical read–write architectures, this promising technology is now moving to the market.
Advances at every stage of the manufacturing process are helping to reduce costs in the photovoltaics industry, but there is still a long way to go before photovoltaic cells reach their true potential.
Multijunction solar cells used in concentrator photovoltaics have enabled record-breaking efficiencies in electricity generation from the Sun's energy, and have the potential to make solar electricity cost-effective at the utility scale.
Polymer materials could bring down the cost of electricity production using photovoltaic technology to below $1 per watt for the first time, and enable mass-market, portable applications for photovoltaic technology.
Penetration of optical-fibre sensors into the medical market has been slow because of high costs and long regulatory procedures. Today, however, an increasing number of life-saving medical procedures are benefiting from the advantages that these tiny sensors can bring.
The aerospace and wind-energy industries, which use composite materials to build aircraft and turbine blades, are beginning to use fibre-optic sensors to monitor the health of these massive structures.
Optical-fibre sensors have become an indispensable tool in the oil and gas industry, helping engineers to not only locate wells, but also get the most out of them.
Fibre-laser technology is enabling the creation of new types of compact light sources with unique ultrabroad or ultranarrow spectral characteristics. These lasers are now finding applications in diverse fields ranging from biotechnology to test and measurement apparatus.
Flexibility, speed of processing and maintenance-free operation are now rapidly making fibre lasers the technology of choice for marking plastics and metals.
