One of the cool projects that I presented last week at TechConnect Summit (which by the way was a great success. Congrats to Jennifer for the organization!), is a wearable photonic colored fibers developed by Pr. Maksim Skorobagatiy at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal.
Smart textiles are now everywhere (Frost and Sullivan estimates that in 2020, 80% of the textile will be smart!). Applications already include interactive clothing for sports, hazardous occupations, and military, industrial textiles with integrated sensors or signage, fashion accessories and apparel with unique and variable appearance, etc…
Mainly because of their commercial availability but also their low cost, photonics textile manufacturers usually use silica glass-based telecommunication fibers which cause several challenges in the textile world (How to extract the color from the fiber core? How to generate the color? How to weave them? etc…).
Here comes Pr. Skorobogatiy’s invention!
Instead of using glass-based fibers, he proposes to use photonics crystal fibers made of different layers of polymers which will act as a spectral filter. Therefore, from a single white light source, only a given color will be leaked out of the fiber.
No more need to paint the fiber or to use 3 RGB LED, the color is defined by the fiber design itself (geometry, polymers used, etc…)!
Finally, one of the cool properties of Maksim’s fibers is their ability to change color by mixing the reflected ambient light with the irradiated guided light (inside the fiber).
Under the daylight illumination, and in the absence of guided light, in the fiber is still colored. Consequently, when both the ambient illumination and guided light are present, the overall color of the fiber will be determined by mixing of the two colors in the radiation far field (ex : green + red = yellow).
Applications of this new invention include the development of variable colored uniforms or signs. It could also be used as an anti‐counterfeit label or an intelligent jewelry.
After a wonderful sunny week-end, I’m leaving to Houston to attend TechConnect Summit 2009. This year, 5 of Univalor’s technologies have been accepted.
In case you are attending, I’ll be at Univalor’s booth (# 1029). I’ll also be sending updates on Twitter #TechConnect.
Developed by Pr. Mohamad Sawan and his team at the Polystim neurotechnologies Laboratory , this electrical platform allows blinds to recover vision. This system consists of a miniaturized implant connected to the cortex and communicating to a camera (which acts as an eye prosthesis). Pr. Sawan’s visual prosthesis project passed the stage of perfecting a first generation functional prototype (proof of concept). Now, in view of confirming complete validation, elaborated in vivo tests must be made in collaboration with medical research institutes in Montreal.
Because of the high number of patients diagnosed with cancer, tumor targeting, target chemotherapy and chemoembolization are of special interest for modern medicine. Nevertheless, many tumors are still out of reach to catheterization (in particular the ones that must be targeted in regions only accessible through smaller diameter vessels). Some 40 years after the release of the “Fantastic Voyage”, Prof. Martel came up with the solution. He developed a MRI based platform which enables to reach targets usually inaccessible to catheterization. Its applications include cells targeting, chemo-embolization and local hyperthermia.
“Smart textiles” are already everywhere. Essentially used for their technical performances and their functional properties, they are forecasted to represent 80 % of textiles by 2020. Current photonic textiles, usually made from conventional optical fibers (fiberglasses, usually used in telecommunications), have been shown to be limited in terms of applications since they cannot be woven and don’t provide a uniform coloration in time. Prof. Skorobogatiy proposes to use plastic fibers constituted by successive layers of polymers. From a single light source, Pr. Skorobogatiy’s fibers naturally emit a homogenous color which is controllable in real-time. Furthermore, since they are made of polymers, they can be easily woven using a common loom.
In the past decades, the flow cytometry technologies became a routine test for counting, and discriminating microscopic particles in a stream of fluid. To better discriminate each cell type, these techniques require a first step of fluorescence labeling. This step makes difficult to reuse the sample for further experimentations. Using a refractometer as a detector permits to skip this step. The Prof. Yves-Alain Peter and his team introduce a low cost and high resolution refractometer. Due to its organization, it is capable to characterize a particle in a volume. All its components are fabricated simultaneously in one conventional microfabrication process.
Many methods allow the fabrication of microscopic pieces. However, because of technological limitations, they have been confined to relatively thin device architectures (a few layers) and are limited by materials constraints. To overcome these limitations, Prof. Therriault proposes a radiation-assisted direct-writing approach which allows manufacturing in a straightforward manner and in ambient conditions 3D functionalized microstructures.
One of our patent application has just been successfully reviewed by the USPTO and is now allowed for issuance as a patent: a new SPR biosensor developed by Prof. Skorobogatiy at Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal.
Prof. Skorobogatiy proposes the miniaturization of waveguide-based SPR biosensors. This miniature biosensors operate from IR to visible wavelengths while providing comparable sensitivity to its laboratory predecessors.
The first challenge overcome to achieve portability was to satisfy phase matching condition between waveguide mode and plasmon by employing a multilayer photonic crystal waveguide with a low refractive index core. This enables tuning of the effective refractive index of the Gaussian-like core mode anywhere from zero to the core dielectric. Phase matching with plasmon at any desirable wavelength is achieved using any material combination for the waveguide.
About Univalor’s IP Portfolio:
Between 2001 and 2008, about 520 discoveries arising from Université de Montréal and its affiliated institutions have been evaluated by Univalor and more than 900 patents applications have been filed. Univalor currently has approximately 265 patents and patents pending in its portfolio.
Raman Kashyap and Amirhossein Tehranchi have reached a new milestone towards the direction of pure RGB colors. They propose to use a fiber based wavelength converter as an RGB source. Do you think it could be used within a pico projector?
A first prototype is currently being developed. First publications and simulation results are however already available.
Just to be clear, I’m not an employee of Techconnect organization, but I’m a user of this forum and a great fan, and I try to disseminate my true motivation with that kind of even both internally and externally.
This year was the third time in three that we participated to Techconnect Summit (http://www.techconnect.org/Summit2008/). If you have been there this week of June 2008 in Boston, you certainly heard about the “photonic guitar”. Thanks to Raman Kashyap, the inventor and to Pierre-Matthieu Demizieux, his student, that was us (http://techupdateunivalor.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/88/)!
If you were not able to be there, you should plan next year. Why’s that? First of all, you will be able to see another great invention from one of the institutions Univalor serves! But more importantly, whatever you are involved in technology transfer from university or other organization, or an industry player or an investor, that’s certainly the kind of place you want to be every year. In a very compact 2-3 days show, you will be able to meet with representatives from the industry whom, through their vision of the future of their company, will be able to define areas of interests. You will be able to meet with investors in your new technology based venture. You will be able to meet with researchers and technology transfer professionals to access worldclass technologies and R&D capabilities. All of the above having in common the fact that they consider innovation as a driver for growth.
Let’s hope that there will be more and more initiatives such as Techconnect Summit so we can streamline the process of technolgoy transfer. It could be in many ways, area or domain specific, it could be virtual as well.
And if you are skeptical about such match-making conference, I am pretty sure you will find organizations, such as ours, that made deals following such an event. More than that, I made friends almost all over the world!
Heard about CRLH leaky wave antennas? They are capable to radiate from backfire to endfire.
Prof. Christophe Caloz, École Polytechnique de Montreal, and Shulabh Gupta have been developped a new spectrogram analyzer which uses the unique properties of CRLH antennas.
This system is time and frequency independent and enables monitoring, in real-time, UWB signals. Then, it opens doors to faster and more reliable signal measurement and characterization.
This system is fully tested and characterized with a first prototype and we’re looking for an industrial partner interested in moving to commercialization. Interested?
Further info is also available on Flintbox…
The June edition of Vector is now available! Everything you want to now about Protein tagging, Dry AMD, Filterless Image Sensor and Treatmen of Celiac disease is inside. Come and take a look.
Didier, Morgan and myself are working on new projects:
- Process to build 3D microstructures in real time and in the ambiant condition
- Optical Fiber Structure for Laser Cooling of Solids
- Real-time File transfert monitoring system over a network (Internet, Wireless, etc…)
- Optimized Nanocalorimeter
- Optical device for RBG generation (application targeted: digital projector)
Feel free to contact us if you’re interested in one of them.
The April 2008 edition of the Vector newsletter is now available.
Featuring this month:
1 – Signature of a license agreement with South Korean company Dungil
Rubber Belt Co. Ltd regarding an earthquake-resistant bracing technology.
2 – A real-time image processing technogy
3 – A new vaccine for “Streptococcus suis”, an infectious bacterial pathogen in porks
To read this edition, click here
As usual your comments are very welcome!
