James Schlett

Contributing Editor James Schlett is an award-winning author, poet, and journalist. He is the former editor of BioPhotonics magazine.

Articles
By James Schlett

November 2025

Beyond Adaptive Optics: Semiconductor Applications Enter the Orbit of Wavefront Sensors
Wavefront sensors are strongly associated with adaptive optics due to their ability to measure the phase of light waves as well as their intensity. Moreover, since adaptive optics is tightly tied to...

September 2025

An Unheralded Technique Flourishes in a Mature Sector
Compared to many of the physical vapor deposition techniques that the optical coatings industry commonly uses, plasma-assisted reactive magnetron sputtering (PARMS) can deliver higher throughput(s)...

August 2025

A Photonics Production Ramp-Up Prompts Reprioritization in Workforce Development
Both in the U.S. and overseas, semiconductor manufacturers are ramping up the production of devices that integrate photonics technologies. Workforce development and training initiatives aim to ensure...

July 2025

Underwater Lidar Gives Maritime and Subsea Applications the Green Light
The rollout of self-driving cars onto metropolitan roadways is proof that lidar systems play a major role as an enabling technology to next-generation solutions. With providers such as Waymo and...

February 2025

Low-Power Lasers Heat Up Data Storage
Last spring, electronics giant Toshiba announced its plans to ship its first test sample hard disk drives (HDDs) using heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. Toshiba, at the time of the...

January 2025

Nonvisible Imaging Streamlines Nano and Advanced Manufacturing Applications
To produce faux marble kitchen countertops, a manufacturer places a piece of solarized polypropylene — a thermoplastic polymer material — on top of white stone. To ensure that a...

August 2024

A 15-Week Technician Program Bolsters Central Florida’s Optics Ecosystem
The metropolitan areas of Orlando and Tampa, Fla., experienced the fourth and fifth largest annual population gains, respectively, in the U.S. in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Charles...

May 2024

Thermal Imaging Solutions Mitigate Risks to Pedestrian Safety
According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), more than 75% of automotive-related pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. in 2021 occurred at night. This value is...

May 2024

Bottlenecks in Process and Production Hinder Micro-LED Adoption
Last fall, Samsung Electronics’ visual display business vice president, Tae-yong Son, described the company’s process for manufacturing micro-LED displays as “Trying to place a tiny...

January 2024

Waveguide Designs Bring Extended Reality into Sight
Here is something David Goldman, vice president of marketing for Lumus, never expected to come into the field of view of waveguides: Wine growers using augmented reality (AR) glasses to teach...

December 2023

Ultrafast Imaging Sprouts New Applications in the Life Sciences
Lurking among coral reefs, the snapping shrimp grows to be only ~3 cm, but it wields one of the most powerful claws under the sea. The creature’s claw can shut so quickly that it fires out a...

October 2023

Spectroscopy Rides a Rising Tide of Water-Monitoring Applications
In 2018, when California became the first state to pass legislation requiring the measuring of microplastics in drinking water supplies, it essentially set off a competition that would pit photonic...

August 2023

Optical Workforce Training Comes into Focus
Ten years ago, Tony Amarel’s recruitment firm in Rochester, New York, rarely heard from clients who were willing to pay a fee to fill optical technician positions. But by 2021, the six-county...

June 2023

Quantum Leaps into the Imaging Market
Quantum ghost imaging was less than two decades old when the U.K. government launched the £1 billion Quantum Technologies Program in 2016. The program established four hubs dedicated to various...

April 2023

Smaller Optical Gyroscopes Navigate into Broader Markets
The RQ-4 Global Hawk, Northrop Grumman’s high-altitude remotely piloted aircraft, has a maximum takeoff weight of 32,250 lb. The platform’s massive size affords it the ability to carry a...

March 2023

Metalenses Scale Up to Target the Market for Small Optics
Earlier this year, the first wave of smartphones equipped with STMicroelectronics’ second-generation direct time-of-flight (TOF) sensor reached the consumer market. The sensor includes planar...

January 2023

Lasers Shape a New Future for Additive Manufacturing of Metal Parts
Aerospace and automotive manufacturers initially adopted additive manufacturing (AM) methods as a means to rapidly prototype new parts or to fabricate more complex or consolidated components in a...

September 2022

Increased Component Density Plants Hurdles on the Road to Scaling the Production of PICs
When CEO Iñigo Artundo’s company began providing engineering solutions for photonic integration in 2011, the typical photonic integrated circuit (PIC) had five to 10 components. Today,...

June 2022

STEM Programs Struggle to Satisfy the ‘Endless Demand’ for Photonics Talent
Earlier this year, at a major recruitment event at the University of Arizona’s Wyant College of Optical Sciences (OSC), the job openings listed outnumbered students in attendance. This...

June 2022

An Actively Cooled Mid-IR Telescope Peers Through Space Dust
When the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Herschel Space Observatory revealed that the universe was far richer in star-forming dust than previously thought, the engineers who were...

March 2022

Spectroscopy Takes the Long View on Threat Detection
When the Perseverance rover landed in Mars’ Jezero crater on Feb. 18, 2021, it represented not only a leap in the search for life on the red planet but also in the identification of deadly...

December 2021

E-Mobility Manufacturing Powers Opportunities for Laser Welding
In 2017, research analysts at UBS Securities disassembled a Chevy Bolt, the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle (EV), and a Volkswagen Golf, Europe’s top-selling internal...

October 2021

Low-Power Lasers Are a Force in Photobiomodulation Therapy
One month after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic in March 2020, Brazilian researchers at Hospital Tacchini in Rio Grande do Sul invited Multi Radiance Medical to...

May 2021

As DUV Lithography Rallies, Demand for ArF Lasers Follows
Four years ago, several leading-edge chip foundries raced to roll out extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography processes for sub-14-nm chips that were intended to succeed the preceding generation of...

March 2021

Worsening Wildfires Spark Photonics Demand and Innovations
In October 2016, a downed powerline sparked a wildfire that raged for two weeks and destroyed more than 18,000 acres in the Pike and San Isabel National Forests west of Pueblo, Colo. The so-called...

December 2020

Laser Processing Tools Introduce Flexible Options for Brittle Glass
On Feb. 6, 2016, researchers from the University of Southampton Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) presented UNESCO with a small glass disc during the closing ceremony of the Year of Light. At the...

June 2020

University-Related Startups See Shifting Landscape for Capital
Lately, Les Craig, a partner with Next Frontier Capital, has been feeling as though his business is on another world. His venture capital fund is based in Bozeman, Mont., which is renowned for having...

November 2016

Smartphones Poised to Shake Up Spectroscopy
This June will mark the 10-year anniversary of the release of Apple’s iPhone. It did not take long for this mobile operating system to earn its reputation as a disruptive innovation, with that...

October 2016

Facial Lasers’ Future: Shorter Downtimes, Darker Skin Types
When Dr. Mark Schwartz started performing laser facial rejuvenation treatments, he had regularly advised his patients that they should expect a month of downtime, meaning they’d experience...

July 2016

NIR and Optoacoustic Spectroscopy Cerebral Oximeters Aim to Save Preemies
In 1985, a team of researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., pointed out the incongruity that, while the goal of intensive care for preterm newborns is to ensure their brains...

June 2016

OCT Angiography Opens Eyes
Dr. Daniela Ferrara, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, began researching retinal diseases in 1998. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a...

April 2016

Next-Generation Stereo Endoscopes are Opening Surgeons' Eyes
In its drive to explore outer space, NASA is developing optical technology that tests the limits of the laws of physics and promises to turn neurosurgeons into pioneers in innerspace. While...

February 2016

Drones with Multispectral Cameras Bring Efficiency to High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping
In 1866, the Brno Natural History Society, in what is now the Czech Republic, published an Austrian monk’s paper, “Experiments in Plant Hybridization,” which reviewed his...

January 2016

Top Biophotonics Stories of 2015
A pair of studies released last November indicate that the global biophotonics market hit its stride in 2015 and will significantly grow in size over the next five years. One of those studies, by...

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James Schlett

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By James Schlett