Process Control
The massive increase in processing of food and other consumer products for
distribution worldwide is putting significant pressure on the improvement of
quality, traceability and speed of process. Food processing companies for
example have an imperative to guarantee the excellence and consistency of their
products (meats, grains, fruits) and are increasingly looking into full speed
vision system in order to achieve these results.
For one customer, Princeton Lightwave delivers a multi-spectral camera that adds
line-scan imagery of flowing products at visible and near-infrared
wavelengthsusing detector arrays with CCD and InGaAs materials. This allows a
very accurate separation between good products and rejects. In another
application, Princeton Lightwave has used its laser and system integration
skills in providing very precise infrared light sources which allow to increase
the vision system signal to noise ratios on sorting machines and consequently
their speed and quality.
Medical Diagnostic Tools
As the portion of the GNP that is consumed in health services increases, it
becomes compelling to improve diagnostic and preventative measures for many
growing diseases like diabetes for example. Optical technologies are
increasingly used for this type instrumentation as they have often the
advantage of being non-invasive.
For one customer designing a blood glucose meter for example, PLI supplies a
detector array sensitive from 1200 to 1900nm, which serves as the heart of a
reflectance spectrometer. The wavelength coverage of InGaAs was modified to
extend up to 1900nm through proprietary epitaxial techniques thus allowing
PLI’s customer to cover the two water absorption bands at 1400 and 1800nm and
improved the sensitivity of their instrument.
Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Diagnostics
The switching of individual transistors in silicon integrated circuits generates
brief, extremely faint pulses of light that can be used to analyze circuit
behavior in activities such as circuit development, quality assurance, and
failure analysis. The ability to detect these faint pulses requires a
photodetector in the near infrared capable of resolving optical signals at the
level of a single photon. PLI’s single photon counting InGaAs APDs are the
highest performance detectors available today for photon counting applications
such as semiconductor diagnostics. They have been optimized for operations in
these exacting situations and are enabling many similar applications.
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