Nine new photonics products with capabilities ranging from drug identification to target specific diseases, enhanced portable imaging and sensing tools, and 3D printing of precision glass have been named winners of the 2016 Prism Awards for Photonics Innovation. The awards were presented on 17 February during SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco.

‘This year’s winning products ingeniously deploy key photonics technologies such as quantum cascade and terahertz lasers, infrared sensing, and 3D printing, placing powerful new capabilities in the hands of users,’ said SPIE CEO Eugene Arthurs. ‘They address pressing issues such as the world’s need for sustainable energy and light, and clinicians’ needs for quickly identifying the best drugs to target challenging diseases in time to saves lives and staunch outbreaks before they become epidemics.’

The winners were: Biodesy (USA), for its Delta ultrafast mode-locked Ti:S laser for protein analysis; Spectral Engines (Finland), for its wireless infrared spectrometer; Dolby, Christie, and Necsel (USA), for their Dolby vision cinema laser projector; First Light Imaging (France), for its SWIR camera; and LightFab (Germany), for its technology enabling 3D structures in glasses, making possible the mass production of micro 3D glass for fields such as optics.

Nanoco (UK) won for its non-toxic, cadmium-free quantum dots for new applications in display and lighting; Boulder Nonlinear Systems (USA) for its wide-angle beam steering technology; 4D Technology (USA) for its FlexCam 3D metrology module for flexible electronics; and Lytid (France) for its TeraCascade terahertz laser source.

The Prism Awards were developed to recognise innovative products that are newly available on the open market. Entries were judged by an independent panel of experts including industry executives, leading academic researchers, venture capitalists, and past Prism Award winners.

Further information:

Prism Awards