Efficient speckle-free laser marking using a spatial light modulator

An approach for laser marking surfaces using a liquid–crystal-based spatial light modulator (LC-SLM) for beam patterning and manipulation is presented, designed to avoid the speckle interference problem which is a typical drawback of current SLM-based laser marking processes. In our approach, the LC-SLM is used to generate complex two-dimensional micropatterns (e.g., 20 × 20 datamatrices) with overall dimensions of < 320 by 320 μm. The micropatterns are generated in a series of 16 steps, using a Fresnel zone lens (FZL) combined with a computer-generated hologram (CGH); for each step the whole kinoform (FZL + CGH) is spatially shifted off-axis by a different amount of pixels to build-up the required pattern. In comparison with other SLM-based laser marking approaches already reported in the literature, our method not only eliminates (or at least significantly reduces) unwanted speckle interference but also reduces the laser power required for marking.     

Velocity measurement for moving surfaces using spatial filtering method based on area image sensor

The idea of using spatial filtering method to measure velocity of vehicles for an inertial navigation system is put forward. Corresponding optical system, including a 532 nm solid-state laser as active illumination, is established. A 17.92 mm × 14.34 mm area charge coupled device (CCD) is employed both as detector and as spatial filter. The spatial filtering characteristics are theoretically analyzed using a power spectral density function. The spatial filtering operation of CCD is performed fully by software. Therefore, the parameters of the spatial filter, such as the size and the number of spatial period, are changeable. In addition, the CCD is arranged as two differential spatial filters without any other additional elements. Experiments are carried out to examine the feasibility of CCD as two differential spatial filters and the influence of the number of spatial period on the signal frequency. The results indicate that the more number of spatial period the more accurate measurements can be obtained, and show that the relation between signal frequency and velocity has good linearity. So this velocimeter is suitable to provide velocity information for a vehicle self-contained inertial navigation system.     

Nonlinear All-Optical Switching Device by Using the Spatial Soliton Collision

We propose a new nonlinear all-optical switching device by using the spatial solitons collision. This is 1 × N switching device controlled by two control beams. The numerical results show that this device could really function as a 1 × N all-optical switching device. This device is a potential key component in the application of optical signal processing and optical computing systems.     

A stable and tunable linear polarization single longitudinal mode fiber ring laser

A stable and tunable linear polarization single longitudinal mode fiber ring laser is proposed and demonstrated. A high extinction ratio spatial mode interference filter utilizing two-mode graded-index fiber supresses irregular side modes effectively, the combination of fiber polarizer and polarization maintaining fiber act as a polarization dependent comb filter, and tunable bandpass filter is adopted to select proper lasing wavelength. The power fluctuation and wavelength fluctuation at 1549.88 nm are less than 0.05 dB and 0.02 nm in 1 h, respectively. Only one longitudinal mode appears within a free spectral range of 7.5 GHz, and the degree of polarization in percentage is approximately as high as 99.07%.     

Frequency-agile,rapid scanning spectroscopy: absorption sensitivity of 2 × 10−12 cm−1 Hz−1/2 with a tunable diode laser

We present ultrasensitive measurements of molecular absorption using frequency-agile rapid scanning, cavity ring-down spectroscopy with an external-cavity diode laser. A microwave source that drives an electro-optic phase modulator with a bandwidth of 20 GHz generates pairs of sidebands on the probe laser. The optical cavity provides for high sensitivity and filters the carrier and all but a single, selected sideband. Absorption spectra were acquired by stepping the tunable sideband from mode-to-mode of the ring-down cavity at a rate that was limited only by the cavity decay time. This approach allows for scanning rates of 8 kHz per cavity resonance, a minimum detectable absorption coefficient of 1.7 × 10^?11 cm^?1 after only 20 ms of averaging, and a noise-equivalent absorption coefficient of 1.7 × 10^?12 cm^?1 Hz^?1/2. By comparison with cavity-enhanced laser absorption spectrometers reported in the literature, the present system is, to the best of our knowledge, among the most sensitive and has by far the highest spectrum scanning rate.     

Fluorescence Turn off Sensor for Brilliant Blue FCF- an Approach Based on Inner Filter Effect

A nanosensor with fluorometric readout based on L-cysteine capped cadmium sulphide quantum dots for discriminative detection and determination of Brilliant blue FCF (BB) (in 0.5 M Tris buffer solution of pH 9.5) over other synthetic food colourants is developed. Mechanism of the nanosensor is based on inner filter effect (IFE). The addition of BB into quantum dot solution might induce the quenching of fluorescence. The nanosensor described in this report reveals its simplicity and flexibility due to less laborious and more cost-effective synthesis. The developed fluorescence sensor showed excellent selectivity towards BB, and allows the detection as low as 3.50 × 10^?7 M. The developed sensor exhibited a linear concentration range of 4.00 × 10^?5 to 4.50 × 10^?6 M. More importantly, the proposed sensor exhibit sensitive responses toward BB in food samples such as sports drink and candies, demonstrating its potential in food analysis, which might be significant in food quality control in the future.     

Rotation- and size-invariant object identification system using the liquid crystal on silicon device

We propose a shape discrimination technique using the optical matched spatial filter, which gives an identical result against randomly scattered objects of the same shape but different rotation and scale change. The main idea in this study is to apply optical coordinate transformation, which transforms rotation and scale change including a linear shift into translation, not to the objects themselves but to their Fourier spectra. Thus, rotation and scale change as well as the linear shift can be processed with the same optical matched spatial filter. In addition, we built a two-wavelength system for simultaneous processing of the optical matched spatial filter and optical coordinate transformation. In this system, both Fourier transform and the coordinate transformation were implemented merely by displaying computer-generated holograms (CGH) on the liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices, resulting in a compact lensless system.     

Referenceless PRFS MR Thermometry Using Partial Separability Model

Many areas of magnetic resonance (MR)-guided thermal therapy research would benefit from temperature maps with high spatial and temporal resolution. Conventional thermometry relies on the subtraction of baseline images, which makes it sensitive to tissue motion and frequency drift during the course of treatment. For another case is the limit of magnetic resonance imaging sampling speed, it is hard to accurately achieve MR thermometry with high spatiotemporal resolution especially for dynamic organs. To address these issues, a novel method for MR thermometry is presented by exploiting the data redundancy based on partial separability (PS) model and the referenceless thermometry. The PS model highly sparse sample two datasets in the (k–t) space for image reconstruction, which respectively determine the spatial and temporal resolutions. After the phase information is extracted from the images reconstructed by the PS model, the background phase outside the heated region from each acquired phase image through a polynomial fitting is estimated. Extrapolation of the polynomial to the heated region serves as the background phase estimate, which is then subtracted from the actual phase. The thermometry results showed that this method could accurately capture the dynamic change of MR thermometric images with 1.5 mm × 1.5 mm spatial resolution and 250 ms temporal resolution, respectively. The in vivo experiment of MR-guided high intensity focused ultrasound research and the cardiac dynamic MR thermometry are shown to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed method in high spatiotemporal resolution MR thermometry.     

Efficiency of ionizers in removing airborne particles in indoor environments

Air ionizers are increasingly being used to clean indoor environments of particle pollution. We tested the efficiency of a small negative ion generator (Aironic AH-202) in removing ultrafine particles from indoor environments. A high-flow air filter fitted with a HEPA filter was used to compare the removal efficiencies. We estimated the percentage of particles removed when the ionizer was operated within a closed chamber of volume 1 m³, in a closed unventilated room of volume 20 m³ and in three force-ventilated rooms of volume 32, 45 and 132 m³. The closed chamber studies were conducted with ambient particles and with smoke at particle number concentrations of 5 × 10³ and 7 × 10⁴ cm⁻³, respectively. In both cases, 70% of the particles were removed by the ionizer in 15 min. In general, the particle removal efficiency of both the ionizer and the air filter decreased as the room size increased. Both devices were also more effective in unventilated rooms than in ventilated rooms. The most important finding in this study was that, while the air filter was more effective than the ionizer in the two small rooms, the ionizer was clearly more effective than the air filter in the three largest rooms. We conclude that air ionizers are more suited than high-flow air filters in removing ultrafine particles from rooms larger than about 25 m³. The investigation also showed that small ions produced by the ionizer, placed in one room, were carried through the air conditioning system into other rooms, effectively removing particles from the air in these rooms in the process.     

Picosecond diode-pumped 1.5 μm Er,Yb:glass lasers operating at 10–100 GHz repetition rate

Stable ultrafast laser sources at multi-GHz repetition rates are important for various application areas, such as optical sampling, frequency comb metrology, or advanced high-speed return-to-zero telecom systems. We review SESAM-mode-locked Er,Yb:glass lasers operating in the 1.5 μm spectral region at multi-GHz repetition rates, discussing the key improvements that have enabled increasing the repetition rate up to 100 GHz. We also present further improved results with shorter pulse durations from a 100 GHz Er,Yb:glass laser. With an improved SESAM design we achieved 1.1 ps pulses with up to 30 mW average output power. Moreover, we discuss for the first time the importance of beam quality deteriorations arising from frequency-degenerate higher order spatial modes in such lasers.     

Fluorescent Carbon Dot as Nanosensor for Sensitive and Selective Detection of Cefixime Based on Inner Filter Effect

Here a simple and sensitive fluorescent assay for detecting Cefixime based on inner filter effect (IFE) has been proven, which is conceptually different from the previously reported CEF fluorescent assays. In this sensing platform, fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) were prepared by one-pot synthesis and was directly used as fluorophore in IFE. The method is based on the complexation reaction between cefixime and palladium ion in the presence of acidic buffer solution (pH 4). The Pd(II)-CEFcomplex was capable of functioning as a powerful absorber in IFE to influence the excitation of fluorophore (CDs). Production Pd(II)-CEFcomplex induced the absorption band transition from 310 to 400 nm, which resulted in the complementary overlap with the excitation spectra of CDs. Due to the competitive absorption, the excitation of CDs was significantly weakened, resulting in the quenching of CDs. The present IFE-based sensing strategy showed a good linear relationship from 0.2 × 10^?6 M to 8 × 10^?6 M (R² = 0.987) and provided an exciting detection limit of 0.5 × 10^?7 (3δ/slope). The proposed method has been successfully applied for the determination of cefixime in raw milk and human urine samples.     

Dual resonance in a waveguide-coupled ring microresonator

Eigenmodes of an isolated circular ring or disk microresonator are degenerate because of its rotational symmetry. Coupling of the microresonator to a straight bus guide breaks the rotational symmetry of the device. As a result, two slightly different resonant frequencies occur. While this effect is known in microring lasers, it is usually neglected in microring-based filters and add-drop de/multiplexers for telecom applications. Resonant frequency splitting does not follow from the usual ‘optical circuit’ analysis of the microring devices in which the coupling between the bus guide and ring is described by the 2  ×  2 coupling matrix. It is shown here that the full 4  ×  4 scattering matrix that takes into account also the back-reflections in the coupling region has to be used in order to include this effect into consideration. The magnitude of the resonant frequency splitting due to coupling to the bus guides in small high-contrast structures is estimated by two-dimensional numerical modelling based on bi-directional mode expansion and FDTD algorithms.     

Life-cycle assessment of engineered nanomaterials: a literature review of assessment status

The filtration of airborne nanoparticles is an important control technique as the environmental, health, and safety impacts of nanomaterials grow. A review of the literature shows that significant progress has been made on airborne nanoparticle filtration in the academic field in the recent years. We summarize the filtration mechanisms of fibrous and membrane filters; the air flow resistance and filter media figure of merit are discussed. Our review focuses on the air filtration test methods and instrumentation necessary to implement them; recent experimental studies are summarized accordingly. Two methods using monodisperse and polydisperse challenging aerosols, respectively, are discussed in detail. Our survey shows that the commercial instruments are already available for generating a large amount of nanoparticles, sizing, and quantifying them accurately. The commercial self-contained filter test systems provide the possibility of measurement for particles down to 15 nm. Current international standards dealing with efficiency test for filters and filter media focus on measurement of the minimum efficiency at the most penetrating particle size. The available knowledge and instruments provide a solid base for development of test methods to determine the effectiveness of filtration media against airborne nanoparticles down to single-digit nanometer range.     

Design and analysis of miniature high-resolution omnidirectional gaze optical imaging system

A miniature high-resolution omnidirectional gaze optical imaging system comprising one optical low-pass filter and 5 lens elements with just one aspheric surface was successfully designed. The total tracking length of the system is 14.7 mm and fit on a 5MPx 2/3in CCD with 2448?×?2050 pixel of 3.45 μm for the full 360°?×?200° imaging. We introduced the difficulties in the design of ultrawide field of view system and proposed specific computations to overcome them by aberration theories, furthermore making a simulated analysis and performance evaluation using ZEMAX optical design software. The result shows that an admirable corrected field curvature along with a low F-theta distortion, and a perfect lateral and longitudinal color aberration correction were achieved; relative illumination of all field is over 68%; when the ambient temperature changes from ?40 to 70 ℃, the modulation transfer function performs in a steady range at 75 lp/mm; all of these will promote the wide-field lens application in medical, automotive, and stereo vision.     

Measurement of X-ray for the dose area product and spectrum by the added filtration in Rando phantom

The most important point in the medical use of radiation is to minimize the patient entrance dose while maintaining the diagnostic information. Low-energy photons (long-wave X-ray) are unnecessary among diagnostic X-ray because they are mostly absorbed and increase the patient's entrance dose. The most effective method to eliminate the low-energy photon is use of a filtering plate. Using a filter appropriate for the image will maintain diagnostic value. Obtaining an effective image allows comparison of the resulting images in a logical objective way. This experiment was performed to determine the quality of image dosimeter when there is no filter, and when 2 mm Al, 0.1 mm Cu + 1 mm Al, 0.2 mm Cu + 1 mm Al filters are used. Using TORECK PD-8100 dose area products meter placed on top of an abdominal phantom, we measured the dose when the filter changes in this condition 85 kVp, 40 mAs, anode angle 13, source image distance 100 cm, 20 cm × 20 cm. We used the SRS-78 program for accurate comparison because we could not evaluate the difference in the image optically. The spectrum changed due to the emission of X-rays as the filter changed. We observed that the use of a filter eliminated the low-energy photons and revealed continuous X-ray and special X-ray. Therefore, the experiment highlighted the advantages of filters and confirmed that there are no changes in the quality of image through signal to noise ratio, peak signal to noise ratio, root mean square error comparison. We found that the use of filter did not lead to distortions in the image or drop in diagnostic value while minimizing the radiation dose. This means that it can help manage long-term patient dose. We conclude that we need to recommend the use of the filter as it reduces the area of dose.     

Modified dislocation filter method: toward growth of GaAs on Si by metal organic chemical vapor deposition

In this paper, metamorphic growth of GaAs on (001) oriented Si substrate, with a combination method of applying dislocation filter layer (DFL) and three-step growth process, was conducted by metal organic chemical vapor deposition. The effectiveness of the multiple InAs/GaAs self-organized quantum dot (QD) layers acting as a dislocation filter was researched in detail. And the growth conditions of the InAs QDs were optimized by theoretical calculations and experiments. A 2-μm-thick buffer layer was grown on the Si substrate with the three-step growth method according to the optimized growth conditions. Then, a 114-nm-thick DFL and a 1-μm-thick GaAs epilayer were grown. The results we obtained demonstrated that the DFL can effectively bend dislocation direction via the strain field around the QDs. The optimal structure of the DFL is composed of three-layer InAs QDs with a growth time of 55 s. The method could reduce the etch pit density from about 3 × 10⁶ cm^?2 to 9 × 10⁵ cm^?2 and improve the crystalline quality of the GaAs epilayers on Si.     

A new luminescence detection and stimulation head for the Risø TL/OSL reader

A new automated Detection And Stimulation Head (DASH) has been developed for the Risø TL/OSL luminescence reader to provide easy access to new technologies, new signals and new measurement methods. The automated DASH includes a filter changer and a detector changer that makes it possible to change stimulation filters (4 × 4 filter combinations possible) and detectors (3 detectors possible) as part of a measurements sequence. The new automated DASH with dedicated driver electronics does not affect the use of other attachments, and can be retrospectively fitted to existing Risø TL/OSL readers.     

Dosimetry and fast neutron energies characterization of photoneutrons produced in some medical linear accelerators

This work focusses on the estimation of induced photoneutrons energy, fluence, and strength using nuclear track detector (NTD) (CR-39). Photoneutron energy was estimated for three different linear accelerators, LINACs as an example for the commonly used accelerators. For high-energy linear accelerators, neutrons are produced as a consequence of photonuclear reactions in the target nuclei, accelerator head, field-flattening filters and beam collimators, and other irradiated objects. NTD (CR-39) is used to evaluate energy and fluence of the fast neutron. Track length is used to estimate fast photoneutrons energy for linear accelerators (Elekta 10 MV, Elekta 15 MV, and Varian 15 MV). Results show that the estimated neutron energies for the three chosen examples of LINACs reveals neutron energies in the range of 1–2 MeV for 10 and 15 MV X-ray beams. The fluence of neutrons at the isocenter (Φ_total) is found to be (4×10⁶ n cm² Gy^?1) for Elekta machine 10 MV. The neutron source strengths Q are calculated. It was found to be 0.2×10¹² n Gy^?1 X-ray at the isocenter. This work represents simple, low cost, and accurate methods of measuring fast neutrons dose and energies.     

Measurement of subcellular texture by optical Gabor-like filtering with a digital micromirror device

We demonstrate an optical Fourier processing method to quantify object texture arising from subcellular feature orientation within unstained living cells. Using a digital micromirror device as a Fourier spatial filter, we measured cellular responses to two-dimensional optical Gabor-like filters optimized to sense orientation of nonspherical particles, such as mitochondria, with a width around 0.45 microm. Our method showed significantly rounder structures within apoptosis-defective cells lacking the proapoptotic mitochondrial effectors Bax and Bak, when compared with Bax/Bak expressing cells functional for apoptosis, consistent with reported differences in mitochondrial shape in these cells. By decoupling spatial frequency resolution from image resolution, this method enables rapid analysis of nonspherical submicrometer scatterers in an undersampled large field of view and yields spatially localized morphometric parameters that improve the quantitative assessment of biological function.     

The Study of Heterogeneous Polymer Systems by Synchrotron Infrared Microscopy

Abstract

Synchrotron infrared (IR) microscopy is used to study multiphase polymer systems. Data is obtained at high spatial resolution from polymer blends, composites, and polymorphic isotactic polypropylene, and spectra are recorded successfully with apertures as small as 3 µm × 3 µm due to the high brightness of the synchrotron IR source.