News › Fraun­ho­fer IOF • Applied Pho­to­nics Award 2023

»Applied Pho­to­nics Award 2023«: These are the winners

Fraun­ho­fer IOF Young Rese­ar­cher Award for Inno­va­tive The­ses Presented

How can com­pu­ters become even more powerful with the help of light while con­sum­ing less energy? How can we pro­duce tiny micro-optics fas­ter and more cost-effec­tively in the future? And how can fin­dings from nano-optics be applied to the indus­trial use of quan­tum sen­sors? The prize win­ners of this year’s »Applied Pho­to­nics Award« are addres­sing these and other ques­ti­ons about the future. The Young Rese­ar­cher Award was pre­sen­ted to the five award win­ners of 2023 on Octo­ber 12 as part of the »Pho­to­nics Days Jena«.

Pas­sion for light – that is Fraun­ho­fer IOF. The insti­tute wants to share its enthu­si­asm for the fasci­na­ting world of pho­tons with young rese­ar­chers. To this end, the insti­tute has laun­ched the »Pho­to­nics Days Jena«, a career and net­wor­king event for stu­dents, and the »Applied Pho­to­nics Award«. The award honors out­stan­ding final the­ses in the field of optics and pho­to­nics and was pre­sen­ted today as part of the career event. Prof. Dr. Anke Kaysser-Pyz­alla, Chair­man of the Exe­cu­tive Board of the Ger­man Aero­space Cen­ter (DLR) and key­note spea­ker at this year’s »Pho­to­nics Days Jena«, pre­sen­ted the award to the prize win­ners tog­e­ther with Dr. Katja Böh­ler, State Secre­tary for Rese­arch, Inno­va­tion and Eco­no­mic Deve­lo­p­ment in Thuringia.

A jury of experts con­sis­ting of repre­sen­ta­ti­ves from sci­ence and indus­try had pre­viously sel­ec­ted the award-win­ning the­ses. Three the­ses were awarded in the cate­go­ries Bache­lor, Master/Diploma and Dis­ser­ta­tion. In addi­tion, the jury awarded two spe­cial pri­zes this year: one for an out­stan­ding work in the field of applied quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies and one for a basic rese­arch work. The win­ners of the 2023 Award are:

Best Bache­lor The­sis (1.000 €)

Manuel Kloc­kow (Fried­rich-Schil­ler-Uni­ver­si­tät Jena): »Eva­lua­ting Dif­frac­tive Neu­ral Net­work Architectures«

Arti­fi­cial neu­ral net­works are com­pu­ter pro­grams that attempt to work like the human brain to solve pro­blems. Tra­di­tio­nally, infor­ma­tion in such net­works is pro­ces­sed with the help of elec­tri­city. In con­trast, so-cal­led dif­frac­tive neu­ral net­works offer a new, exci­ting approach because: they use light ins­tead of elec­tri­city to pro­cess infor­ma­tion. Dif­frac­tive neu­ral net­works work very quickly while con­sum­ing very little energy. The high speed is achie­ved by the fact that infor­ma­tion can pro­pa­gate through the net­work in par­al­lel and at the speed of light. Such net­works are the­r­e­fore par­ti­cu­larly inte­res­t­ing where the energy and per­for­mance of a hard­ware are limi­ted, such as in auto­no­mous driving.

In his bache­lor the­sis, Manuel Kloc­kow inves­ti­ga­tes the per­for­mance of dif­fe­rent archi­tec­tures of such dif­frac­tive neu­ral net­works. He pur­sues his inves­ti­ga­tion with the help of simu­la­ti­ons. With his work, Manuel Kloc­kow also intro­du­ces a new type of dif­frac­tive neu­ral net­works whose per­for­mance exceeds that of the net­works inves­ti­ga­ted by pre­vious research.

Best Mas­ter The­sis (2,000 €)

Vale­riia Sedova (Fried­rich-Alex­an­der-Uni­ver­si­tät Erlan­gen-Nürn­berg): »Mode­ling of thick pho­to­re­sist for grayscale litho­gra­phy application«

In her master’s the­sis, Vale­riia Sedova addres­ses a cri­ti­cal chall­enge in micro-opti­cal com­po­nent fabri­ca­tion: the lack of a well-estab­lished model for thick pho­to­re­sist in grayscale litho­gra­phy. Her rese­arch focu­ses on the deve­lo­p­ment of a spe­cia­li­zed method for manu­fac­tu­ring micro­sco­pic opti­cal com­pon­ents with enhan­ced pre­cis­ion and effi­ci­ency, spe­ci­fi­cally tail­o­red to address this gap in the field. At the same time, Vale­riia Sedova’s rese­arch lays the foun­da­tion for the inte­gra­tion of so-cal­led deep lear­ning tech­ni­ques into the manu­fac­tu­ring pro­cess. With their help, pre­dic­tions of indi­vi­dual struc­tu­ral shapes can be made, opti­mi­zing the accu­racy of the product.

Micro-opti­cal com­pon­ents are used in a wide range of indus­tries, inclu­ding tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, medi­cal ima­ging and con­su­mer elec­tro­nics. Vale­riia Sedova’s rese­arch is hel­ping to make pro­duc­tion in these and other appli­ca­tion areas fas­ter and che­a­per in the future.

Best Dis­ser­ta­tion (3,000 €)

Dr. Vin­cent Hahn (Karls­ru­her Insti­tut für Tech­no­lo­gie): »3D Laser Micro- and Nano­prin­ting: Finer, Fas­ter, and More Affordable«

From small tools for ever­y­day use to large machi­nes for indus­trial mass pro­duc­tion, 3D prin­ting is beco­ming incre­asingly popu­lar and its range of appli­ca­ti­ons is con­stantly expan­ding. Com­pared to con­ven­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­ring methods, such as injec­tion mol­ding, 3D prin­ters have clear advan­ta­ges: Cus­to­mi­zed pro­to­ty­pes for com­pon­ents can be pro­du­ced in a very short time and cos­tly molds can be avo­ided. Howe­ver, in the pro­duc­tion of small-struc­tu­red com­pon­ents such as micro-optics, tra­di­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­ring methods are usually used.

In his dis­ser­ta­tion, Vin­cent Hahn the­r­e­fore addres­ses the ques­tion of how 3D prin­ting pro­ces­ses can also be imple­men­ted more quickly and cost-effec­tively for fine com­pon­ents. To this end, he is deve­lo­ping two novel 3D prin­ters as well as the appro­priate coa­tings. The pro­ces­ses deve­lo­ped by Vin­cent Hahn increase the through­put as well as the prin­ting speeds of 3D prin­ting, making it more com­pe­ti­tive with con­ven­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­ring methods. In the work, mecha­ni­cal meta­ma­te­ri­als were pro­du­ced with the two novel 3D prin­ters. In the future, they could also be used to pro­duce micro-optics, for exam­ple, which are alre­ady being used today in facial reco­gni­tion sys­tems for smartphones.

Prize of the Jury for Applied Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies (1,500 €)

Phil­ipp Reuschel (Uni­ver­si­tät Sie­gen): »Vec­tor magne­to­me­try based on pola­ri­me­tric opti­cally-detec­ted magne­tic resonance«

So-cal­led vec­tor magne­to­me­try is a method to mea­sure magne­tic fields. It is used to deter­mine in which direc­tion a magne­tic field points and how strong it is. This method is used, for exam­ple, in navi­ga­tion, mate­ri­als and life sci­en­ces, and pre­cis­ion metro­logy. Various sen­si­tive magne­tic field sen­sors exist for this pur­pose, but typi­cally suf­fer from high tech­ni­cal com­ple­xity and low spa­tial resolution.

In his mas­ter the­sis, Phil­ipp Reuschel pres­ents a novel approach to mea­sure the direc­tion of even tiny magne­tic fields. These are espe­ci­ally important for state-of-the-art quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies. For his method, Phil­ipp Reuschel uses spe­cial dia­mond crys­tals that have tiny imper­fec­tions in the crys­tal. These flaws func­tion like mini com­pass need­les and can thus indi­cate magne­tic fields. Micro­wa­ves and laser light can also be used to deter­mine the strength and direc­tion of the magne­tic field. The approach pre­sen­ted by Phil­ipp Reuschel com­bi­nes high sen­si­ti­vity with nan­os­cale spa­tial reso­lu­tion and simul­ta­neous robust­ness against envi­ron­men­tal influences.

Prize of the jury for basic rese­arch work in an important future field of the modern infor­ma­tion society (1,500 €)

Dr. Tobias Weitz (Fried­rich-Alex­an­der-Uni­ver­si­tät Erlan­gen-Nürn­berg), »Light­wave elec­tro­nics in graphene«

Com­pu­ters have become an indis­pensable part of our modern infor­ma­tion society. The most ele­men­tary com­po­nent of any com­pu­ter are the so-cal­led logic gates. They pro­cess logi­cal sta­tes (i.e. a 0 or a 1) so that these in turn result in new sta­tes (i.e. 0 or 1). Up to now, such logic gates have usually been built from so-cal­led semi­con­duc­tor-based tran­sis­tors. Here, logic ope­ra­ti­ons are per­for­med with the help of micro­wave elec­tri­cal signals. The pro­blem is that the fur­ther deve­lo­p­ment of their clock rate has now rea­ched its limit. As a result, logi­cal ope­ra­ti­ons can hardly run fas­ter than a nano­se­cond. Recently, howe­ver, we have found our­sel­ves in a deve­lo­p­ment of algo­rithms, e.g. for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gen­ces, which will reach their limits wit­hout an extreme increase in the clock rate and thus in the com­pu­ting capacities.

Tobias Weitz addres­ses this pro­blem in his dis­ser­ta­tion. In his work, he demons­tra­tes an approach for light-field dri­ven logic gates. They are able to pro­cess logic sta­tes of 0 or 1 within one fem­to­se­cond. A fem­to­se­cond is one mil­lionth of a bil­lionth of a second. For this pur­pose, Tobias Weitz uses extre­mely short and intense laser pul­ses. In the future, this tech­no­logy could be used in state-of-the-art com­pu­ter pro­ces­sors as well as other digi­tal devices, thus not only over­co­ming the pre­vious limit of the clock rate, but dra­ma­ti­cally incre­asing it.

About the »Applied Pho­to­nics Award«

The »Applied Pho­to­nics Award« emer­ged from the »Green Pho­to­nics Young Sci­en­tist Award« – since 2018 with a new look and new con­tent. It is orga­ni­zed by the Fraun­ho­fer Insti­tute for Applied Optics and Pre­cis­ion Engi­nee­ring IOF in Jena, Ger­many. The insti­tute has been con­duc­ting appli­ca­tion-ori­en­ted rese­arch in the fields of optics and pho­to­nics for over 25 years. As key tech­no­lo­gies, these disci­pli­nes con­tri­bute to sol­ving upco­ming chal­lenges for society, eco­nomy, and indus­try. In order to honor par­ti­cu­larly ori­gi­nal and inno­va­tive the­ses deal­ing with the topics of applied pho­to­nics, this young rese­ar­cher award was created.

The »Applied Pho­to­nics Award« is pre­sen­ted in 2023 with the kind sup­port of the Asso­cia­tion of Ger­man Engi­neers (VDI) as well as the com­pa­nies Active Fiber Sys­tems, JENOPTIK, Hua­wei Tech­no­lo­gies and TRUMPF.

The fol­lo­wing link leads you to the press release and pic­tures: https://s.fhg.de/Applied-Photonics-Award-2023

 

October 17th, 2023

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