Active contribution to the photonics community at SPIE Photonics West
SPIE Photonics West, held in San Francisco from January 27 through February 1, 2024, was a terrific opportunity for ams OSRAM to actively engage with customers and collaboration partners in the photonics community. At the show, we contributed as a conference organizer, exhibitor and presented at nine lectures.
Considered the world’s premier event for lasers, biomedical optics and biophotonic technologies, quantum, and optoelectronics, this impressive show’s four tracks of conferences, tutorials and exhibitions – OPTO, LASE, BIOS and Quantum West – attracted over 5,000 contributors and more than 20,000 visitors.
SPIE Photonics West continues to be one of the most important fairs and conferences for semiconductor laser, covering the entire spectral range from UV-C via VIS to IR. LIDAR and AR/VR applications were the major applications.
Showcasing new product innovations
The ams OSRAM exhibition booth was a melting pot of business people, technology experts and scientists. Here we showcased a wide variety of photonics products, including LEDs, VCSELs, edge-emitting lasers, CMOS image sensors and mixed-signal analog integrated circuits. We introduced two new outstanding products – Mira016 and SFH 2704A. The Mira016 is a new image sensor that offers power savings at high-quantum efficiency. It was a focal part of a highlight eye-tracking application in the booth. The SFH 2704A featured in a smart watch vital-sign monitoring demonstration and is a compact photodiode that allows customers to optimize the power budget by reducing LED driving current. Other popular demonstrations included near-to-eye projection in AR glasses, featuring the OSRAM OSTAR™ projection LED; a robotic arm for various industrial applications using the Mira220 CMOS image sensor; and a 3D camera with a groundbreaking 1300 nm VCSEL that is ideal for autonomous vehicles, robots, and agricultural platforms.
Conference: Light-emitting devices, materials, and applications
ams OSRAM co-organized the Conference “Light-emitting devices, materials, and applications,” which was unique in covering the entire scope from leading-edge research to innovative optoelectronic devices, their applications, and their fabrication methods and technology. Invited and contributed presentations from industry and academia highlighted the most recent achievements and their realization in upcoming products.
UV-C LED technology advancements and a fundamental understanding of prevailing degradation mechanisms were demonstrated in the sessions on “UV and DUV LEDs and their applications.” Alexander Wilm illustrated the ams OSRAM roadmap for UV-C LEDs to replace mercury containing conventional UV-lamps and suitable applications in his invited talk underlining ams OSRAM’s leadership in this field.
Mona Feige presented “Novel photonics dielectric substrate process integration development cycle time reduction by Inline Xe Plasma FIB”, a collaboration between ams OSRAM and Applied Materials Inc. She described the benefits of inline Xenon Plasma FIB (XePFIB) and SEM in the fab for improving the cycle time of root cause analysis and process integration development.
The session “NIR/IR emitting devices” featured current and future application and technology trends. While photonic integrated circuits (PICs) move from the research labs and demonstrate first applications (as shown by Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute Berlin).
Amirhossein Ghods of ams OSRAM USA set an impressive benchmark for NIR VCSELs demonstrating high output power, thermal stability and beam quality during his presentation. Ghods also made two additional presentations about developments in VCSELs – “Single-mode single-polarization multijunction VCSELs” and “Design and characterization of multijunction photovoltaic devices for optical wireless power transmission.”
The session “LED Applications and Solid-State Lighting” also attracted a great deal of attention. Benjamin Schulz captivated the audience by outlining the unique performance of the ams OSRAM high power LEDs for projection.
Of course, the elephant in the room was micro-LEDs for AR/VR and display applications. While the progress shown has been remarkable, the efficiency loss compared to mini- and mid-size LEDs remains far from being closed. Sub-micrometer converter materials were noted to be as important as solving the efficiency problem. The presented result on quantum dot converter during the “Wavelength Conversion Materials and Components” session supported that the enormous improvement in performance and lifetime made here will not hamper the commercialization of micro LEDs. The presentation was given by Benjamin D. Mangum of ams OSRAM Portland USA on quantum dot downconverted micro-LED devices.
Once again, SPIE Photonics West proved its importance to the photonics community as a great benchmark for the research and development in industry and academia. In addition for ams OSRAM, it enabled us to promote our laser, sensor and emitter business to a global audience, while providing a stage for our R&D and application engineering prowess.