{"id":105,"date":"2023-11-27T14:59:51","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T13:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/physicsworld.com\/?p=111034"},"modified":"2023-11-27T14:59:51","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T13:59:51","slug":"optics-and-instrumentation-firms-share-in-the-2023-institute-of-physics-business-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/optics-and-instrumentation-firms-share-in-the-2023-institute-of-physics-business-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Optics and instrumentation firms share in the 2023 Institute of Physics business awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I highlighted some of the medical-physics companies that won business innovation awards<\/a> from the Institute of Physics in 2023. But firms in the photonics and instrumentation sectors have done well too, which is perhaps not surprising given that photonics is one of the UK’s largest physics-based industries. As the Photonics Leadership Group<\/a> (PLG) said in a recent statement<\/a>, the UK photonics sector is now worth \u00a315.2bn, with like-for-like revenue growth of more than 7% between 2020 and 2022.<\/p>\n

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Having sat on the judging panel for the IOP\u2019s business awards,\u00a0I can say that\u00a0there were some fantastic entries<\/p>\n

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The PLG, which includes representatives from more than 60<\/a> photonics businesses in the UK, says that there is increased demand for photonics in everything from agriculture, health and communications to defence, satellites and manufacturing. It also points to an increasing commercialization of the burgeoning quantum-technology sector. Indeed, the PLG forecasts that the UK photonics sector will be worth more than \u00a317bn in 2024 and grow to \u00a350bn by 2035.<\/p>\n

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Having sat on the judging panel for the IOP\u2019s business awards, I can say that there were some fantastic entries, which meant that picking winners wasn\u2019t easy. In no particular order, however, the first winner I\u2019d like to mention is Glasgow-based Coherent Scotland<\/a>, which makes ultrafast lasers for applications in the life sciences and industry. The firm\u2019s philosophy is to transform complex, physics-based optical technology into equipment that\u2019s easy to use, even by people who aren\u2019t laser experts. Their award<\/a> recognizes in particular the company\u2019s Axon range of femtosecond lasers<\/a>, which it has developed over the last six years.<\/p>\n

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Operating at three wavelengths that are of particular use in biology (780, 920 and 1064\u00a0nm), the lasers can be easily fitted into existing imaging and industrial tools where space is at a premium. They exploit the technique of chirped pulse amplification<\/a> \u2013 which was recognized by the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics<\/a> \u2013 by taking short, low-power pulses and stretching them out in time. The pulses, which now have a lower peak power, can then be safely amplified before being recompressed into short, higher-peak-power pulses.<\/p>\n

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Traditionally, this technique is only ever found in large, facility-sized laser systems. But the Axon lasers, being so small, have already been used by neuroscientists for in-vivo<\/em> brain imaging and studying neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\u2019s and Parkinson\u2019s. Other applications include cancer diagnostics and drug research, pharmaceutical testing, tropical-disease control and immunology. The future looks bright for the physics of ultrafast laser technology in the biological sciences.<\/p>\n

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Space success<\/h2>\n

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Another winner is KEIT Industrial Analytics<\/a>. Based at Harwell in Oxfordshire, it makes infrared Fourier transform spectrometers for monitoring and controlling industrial production processes. The technology was originally conceived at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory<\/a> in the late 2000s as a compact, rugged high-performance instrument for analysing the atmosphere of Mars. KEIT<\/a> was spun out of the Rutherford lab in 2012.<\/p>\n

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Containing no moving parts, the company\u2019s spectrometers use simple optics to generate an interferogram along a detector array. The data can then be Fourier transformed to return the whole spectrum, creating a robust instrument that can be used directly for instantaneous in-line analysis in production plants. That in turn offers\u00a0real-time spectral data as opposed to delayed, off-line sample analysis which has huge advantages in process control applications on yield and product quality.<\/p>\n

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KEIT\u2019s technology is sold around the world to companies that use it for in-situ<\/em> monitoring of everything from bioethanol and biofuels production to pulp and paper manufacturing. With the global analytical instruments market expected to grow at almost 4% a year to $71.4bn by 2027,\u00a0I think\u00a0KEIT has a bright future. The original Rutherford technology continues to be developed for future off-planet missions so watch this space.<\/p>\n

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Focal Point Positioning<\/a>, meanwhile, won a 2023 IOP business award<\/a> for its pioneering location-awareness technology. Based in Cambridge, the company was founded in 2015 by the physicist Ramsey Faragher<\/a>, who was once dubbed \u201cthe real life Q\u201d \u2013 in a nod to James Bond\u2019s R&D guru \u2013 by Top Gear<\/em> magazine<\/a>. Faragher invented a technology that improves the accuracy, sensitivity and security of devices that use location data from global-navigation satellite systems (GNSS).<\/p>\n

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GNSS is a massive business area. More than $1trillion of the US economy and over \u20ac800bn of the European economy currently depends on this incredible positioning and timing system. However, GNSS is not perfect, especially in cities, where signals can bounce off buildings, causing location-technology devices \u2013 in anything from cars to mobile phones \u2013 to be inaccurate. It\u2019s why the blue dot on your GoogleMaps can be in the wrong place or why your Uber driver can\u2019t find you.<\/p>\n

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The company\u2019s \u201cSupercorrelation\u201d<\/a> technology gets round this problem by working out the direction of incoming signals through special software rather than needing costly antennas or other infrastructure. By detecting \u2013 and ignoring \u2013 fake signals, and recognizing reflected signals, the company\u2019s technology allows metre-level positioning to be maintained on smartwatches, fitness devices and other consumer products even in the trickiest environments.<\/p>\n

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The company has more than 25 patent families and four trademarks on its technology. But Focal Point doesn\u2019t make its own products. Instead, it licenses its technology to other firms, including Switzerland-based u-blox<\/a>, which is the largest chipset designer in Europe. The company is also currently involved in licensing discussions with various leading global smartphone and car manufacturers, and has a partnership with General Motors already in place.<\/p>\n

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Finally, let me mention turboTEM<\/a>, which won an IOP start-up award<\/a> for its equipment that can make electron microscopes work better and last longer. Based in Dublin, Ireland, turboTEM was set up in 2022 by researchers from the ultramicroscopy research group<\/a> at Trinity College, who wanted to take a number of emerging technologies from the lab out into the field. The company was recognized for its modular devices that can be easily and cheaply retrofitted to what is a vital imaging tool.<\/p>\n

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Electron microscopes are great tools but they don\u2019t come cheap, typically costing millions of pounds. Users who want access to the latest advances and improvements in performance can\u2019t easily go out and buy a new one, which is why an upgrade makes a lot of sense. So by extending the useful life of the instrument, turboTEM enables more cutting-edge science and development to be performed on existing tools.<\/p>\n

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In it to win it<\/h2>\n

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As I have mentioned before, all physics-based firms require time and energy to develop products and become globally significant. There\u2019s also the perennial difficulty of explaining a product idea, which is often quite specialized, to potential investors who have little or no science background. An IOP start-up award can therefore show that your technology has won approval from judges with solid physics and business experience.<\/p>\n

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As the chairperson of one award-winning company put it at a presentation held at the UK Houses of Parliament at the end of October, the award is \u201can extra solid data and trusted point for potential investors\u201d. The high-profile event was hosted by the physicist and MP Alok Sharma<\/a>, who has been a long-time supporter of the IOP business awards and served as president of the COP26 conference in Glasgow in 2021.<\/p>\n

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As the chairperson of one winning company put it at a presentation held at the UK Houses of Parliament, the award is \u201can extra solid data point for potential investors\u201d<\/p>\n

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I hope, therefore, that your company, if you have one, will be inspired to apply. And even if you don\u2019t work in a business, remember the IOP also offers three awards (Katharine Burr Blodgett<\/a>, Denis Gabor<\/a> and Clifford Paterson<\/a>) for individuals or teams who have done innovative physics with a commercial angle. Good luck \u2013 and remember, you have to be in it to win it. Award entries for 2024 will be open soon<\/a> so watch this space.<\/p>\n

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The post Optics and instrumentation firms share in the 2023 Institute of Physics business awards<\/a> appeared first on Physics World<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Last month I highlighted some of the medical-physics companies that won business innovation awards from the Institute of Physics in 2023. But firms in the photonics and instrumentation sectors have done well too, which is perhaps not surprising given that photonics is one of the UK’s largest physics-based industries. As the Photonics Leadership Group (PLG)… Continue reading Optics and instrumentation firms share in the 2023 Institute of Physics business awards<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hadamard.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}