Chiral Photonics, Inc. is a

photonics Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Though ...

company based in Pine Brook,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, founded in 1999. The company is developing a new class of

optical device Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...

s based on twisting glass

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass ( silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a mea ...

s. These in-fiber devices aim to displace discrete optical elements such as

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...

filter Filter, filtering or filters may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream * Filter (video), a software component tha ...

s and sensors. They benefit from optical fiber’s transmission efficiency, robustness and ease of integration. The company hopes that its manufacturing process, which is completely automated and scalable, will result, for example, in communications lasers that are fraction of the cost and three times more efficient than today’s semiconductor lasers. Chiral Photonics is also developing chirality in polymeric thin films which, for instance, would enable high quality projection displays.

Funding

Chiral Photonics had received funding from

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles inclu ...

, and government sources including a US$2 million

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...

Advanced Technology Program The NIST Advanced Technology Program (ATP, or NIST ATP) is a United States government (U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology) program designed to stimulate early-stage advanced technology development that woul ...

award in 2004.

Technology

Chiral Photonics’ technology is an outgrowth of the 1997 discovery by two of the company's co-founders, Azriel Genack and Victor Kopp, that lasing in

cholesteric liquid crystal A cholesteric liquid-crystal display (ChLCD) is a display containing a liquid crystal with a helical structure and which is therefore chiral. Cholesteric liquid crystals are also known as '' chiral nematic liquid crystals''. They organize in laye ...

(CLC) films is a result of their unique self-assembling helical (

chiral Chirality is a property of asymmetry important in several branches of science. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek (''kheir''), "hand", a familiar chiral object. An object or a system is ''chiral'' if it is distinguishable from i ...

) microstructure. CLCs are the thin-film material often used to fabricate fish tank thermometers or mood rings, that change color with temperature changes. They change color because their molecules are arranged in a helical or chiral arrangement and with temperature the pitch of that helical structure changes, reflecting different wavelengths of light. Drs. Genack and Kopp decided to pursue the possibility that CLCs, with their natural chiral structure, could provide a platform for a versatile new class of photonic devices. In biomimetic fashion, Chiral Photonics has abstracted the self-assembled structure of the organic CLCs to produce analogous optical devices using tiny lengths of inorganic, twisted fiber. Designing novel microforming towers, the company is able to fabricate devices based on fibers that can be twisted through more than 25,000 revolutions over a one-inch length. These revolutions function as would a fiber Bragg grating. The density of twists per inch, or periodicity, demonstrably results in the light being coupled to the fiber cladding, scattered out of the fiber, or reflected back within the fiber. This interaction with light can be harnessed to produce sensors, polarizers/isolators, and filter/lasers, respectively.

Applications

These basic components can be used for a variety of applications and all share a common production platform. In his comments upon the grant’s award, William Sargeant, the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

program officer who oversaw Chiral Photonics' first SBIR award, noted the range of existing and incipient markets. "This technology could be one of the most significant recent advances in the field of polarization and wavelength control. There is an enormous host of applications for which chiral fiber gratings could find markets." Chiral Photonics’ components are all of the all-fiber variety. Released products include linear and circular polarizers, ultra-high temperature sensors, customized harsh environment pressure, axial rotation, and liquid level sensors, and a spot size converting interconnect. The spot size converter, while not of chiral geometry, leverages the company’s glass microfabrication knowhow. The spot size converter (SSC) couples light between widely disparate (NA and MFD) components, such as, between <25 micrometre planar waveguides or laser diodes, and standard 125 micrometre SMF fiber. The SSC allows for direct light coupling with no air gap, sub-0.5 dB loss, and extinction ratios of >20 dB for use in

silicon photonic Silicon photonics is the study and application of photonic systems which use silicon as an optical medium. The silicon is usually patterned with sub-micrometre precision, into microphotonic components. These operate in the infrared, most commo ...

s and other applications. Chiral Photonics also offers twisted capillary tubes for proteomic analysis. The protein unfolds as it passes through the channel allowing for imaging. In other uses the rotation of the protein as it passes through the channel facilitates 360° imaging. The capillary tubes also have other microfluidic applications including mixing and uniform heat exchange.

Patents

Chiral Photonics has been issued 19 United States or International

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

s relating to its photonics research.

References

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External links