Federal Funds Foster Photonics

Daniel C. McCarthy

Ten photonics projects have won contracts valued at more than $29 million under the US Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program. Awarded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., the contracts foster nascent and potentially marketable technologies that might never emerge from the laboratory without assistance.

The projects cover several applications of photonics in medicine and biology, semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, industrial and scientific monitoring, communications and machine vision. The winning companies and projects include:

Animas Corp. of Frazer, Pa., and Sarnoff Corp. of Princeton, N.J., $3.18 million for a long-term implantable monitor that uses optical methods to continuously measure blood-glucose levels and that transmits results to an external display unit.
Brewer Science Inc. of Rolla, Mo., $2 million for a contact planarization method based on the application of a UV-cured coating to improve the flatness of layers in microelectronic integrated circuitry.
CombiSep Inc. of Ames, Iowa, $1.99 million for a multiplexed UV-absorbance-based capillary electrophoresis technique for comprehensive peptide mapping.
Kiara Networks of Albuquerque, N.M., $1.99 million for an optical technology platform designed to inexpensively fabricate low-loss, all-fiber network components and subsystems.
Luna Innovations Inc. of Blacksburg, Va., $1.43 million for a fiber optic sensor suite for real-time monitoring of carbon steel flow lines used in deepwater oil and gas production.
The National Storage Industry Consortium based in San Diego, $10.76 million for an optically assisted method that enables magnetic recording media to reach storage densities of Tb/in.².
Northwest Marine Technology Inc. of Shaw Island, Wash., $2 million for a machine vision system that automatically measures, sorts, vaccinates and tags juvenile hatchery fish.
OEwaves Inc. of Pasadena, Calif., $2 million for an optically driven oscillator to generate ultralow phase-noise microwave reference signals from 1 to 100 GHz for broadband communications applications.
Phoenix Science & Technology Inc. of North Chelmsford, Mass., $2 million for more efficient surface-discharge high-intensity UV lamp systems.
Titan Technologies of Santa Rosa, Calif., $1.78 million for a UV photocatalytic reactor for purifying drinking water.

For details on specific projects or to view the list of all 59 projects announced last month, visit the program's Web site at www.atp.nist.gov.