Award-winning Spero™ is the industry’s first laser-based infrared microscopy platform.
The CLEO: 2014 co-sponsors (APS, IEEE Photonics Society, OSA) and Laser Focus World today announced Daylight Solutions as the winner of this year’s CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Award. The award recognizes the company "for the development of Spero™, the first laser-based infrared microscope that delivers high-resolution (< 5 µm) images over a wide field of view in a compact, broadly tunable, turnkey instrument with rapid ‘live mode’ imaging at 30 fps." Daylight Solutions will accept the award at the CLEO Plenary Session Tuesday, June 12 in the San Jose Civic Auditorium in San Jose, Calif., USA.
Spero is the first laser‐based infrared microscopy platform and represents a breakthrough in high‐performance spectral imaging. Combining the latest high‐power, broadband quantum cascade laser (QCL) sources and a new family of high‐NA, wide‐field objectives, it significantly outperforms existing FTIR microscopes in traditional metrics such as spatial resolution, speed, signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and field‐of‐view (FOV), while also enabling new functionality such as live video absorbance contrast imaging and rapid sparse data collection.
These new capabilities, combined with a small desktop footprint and the
elimination of cryogenic cooling, enable new applications and serve market needs unmet by FTIR-based solutions. Further, Spero offers a modern data collection and analysis work flow through its user-centric and context-aware software, ChemVision™, which supports applications in a variety of fields from cancer diagnostics and drug discovery to materials research and semiconductor defect analysis.
“Daylight Solutions is honored to receive the 2014 CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Award,” said company president and COO, Paul Larson. “Daylight is proud of its heritage as a world leader in advanced mid-IR laser-based solutions. We believe that any meaningful advancement in technology is ultimately measured by the tangible benefit it brings to society. The Spero microscope is a game changer in applications
that range from tissue diagnostics to materials analysis and we will definitely
see significant contributions from this product.”
In addition to Daylight Solutions’ winning entry, two other products will be recognized at CLEO: 2014 with honorable mentions:
AUREA Technology
First commercial high-brightness twin-photon source
For the development of the high-brightness Twin-Photon Source called TPS_1550, an integrated 1550 nm photon-pair source for scientists and engineers developing quantum optics technologies, which creates entangled photons on demand with excellent spectral brightness (> 10^5 photons/s/pm), emission bandwidth (6 GHz-7 THz) and high stability (5 pm).
HÜBNER GmbH & Co.KG
First full-visible-range tunable CW optical parametric oscillator
For C-WAVE, the first coherent continuous-wave source with optical parametric oscillation and frequency doubling combined in one cavity for tuning across the visible range without any change of laser materials or components, offering an improved ease-of-use tool for spectroscopy applications.
“The winners of this year’s Innovation Award highlight the breadth of laser technology in today’s world—from medical diagnostics to quantum optics to optical communications,” said Conard Holton, editor-in-chief of Laser Focus World. “Each year we see entries from companies that are leading the field with their innovative product offerings—all of which will be on display at CLEO. I congratulate Daylight Solutions and the two honorable mentions for this well-deserved recognition.”
The annual CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Awards Program honors the most timely, ground-breaking products in the field of laser science. Designed to showcase some of the most significant new products in the field, Innovation Award entries are evaluated on criteria critical to product success, such as innovation, functionality and life expectancy.
For more information on the CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Awards, visit the CLEO: 2014 website.