busiNEss NEWs
PHoToniCs PeoPle
rofin-baasel lasertech has appointed Andreas ewald as managing director of the swiss rofin subsidiary lasag.
thin film optical coating specialist Deposition sciences has appointed David Favot as senior program manager.
Dr Thomas Heinrich has joined instrument systems as chief operating officer and managing director with responsibility for finance, operations, human resources and production.
ocean optics has appointed Kevin Chittim as its new president, with Robert Randelman moving to divisional chief executive for the spectrometer specialist’s parent firm Halma.
the founder of Edinburgh instruments (Ei), Professor Desmond smith obE Frs FrsE, has been presented with the royal society of Edinburgh’s royal Medal, recognising his outstanding endeavour in the field of photonics and opto-electronics over five decades.
sensofar-tech, the manufacturer of non-contact surface metrology systems, has appointed Gerald nitsch as Vp of sales and marketing, while natxo Millan joins as software manager.
Christoph sieber has been appointed general manager at sill optics.
laser light produces synthetic tissue
tissue engineering pursues the aim of replacing natural tissue after injuries and illnesses with implants, which enable the body to regenerate itself with the patient’s own cells. Knowledge of the interaction between cells in a three-dimensional framework and the growth conditions for complete regeneration is essential, so that tissue can be produced to replicate the body’s natural tissue.
Using a special laser
technique, research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser technology ILt and other Fraunhofer Institutes have succeeded in producing hybrid biomimetic matrices. these serve as a basis for scaffold and implant structures on which the cells can grow effectively. If tissue has been badly
damaged by disease or an accident – or if parts of the tissue have been completely removed – the body is often unable to regenerate this tissue itself. What’s more, in many cases no
endogenous material is available for transplants. As a result, demand in the medical field is increasing for implants that enable complete regeneration to take place. but the current artificially-produced implants are often not adequately adapted to the environment in the patient’s body and are therefore of limited use as a tissue replacement. the main reason for this is the lack of knowledge on how cells react to a three-dimensional environment. Scientists at Fraunhofer ILt, in cooperation with other Fraunhofer
6 ElEctro optics l october 2011 capillaries of artificial resilient polymer with a diameter of 20µm
Institutes, however, have developed a process for producing biomimetic scaffolds, which closely emulates the endogenous tissue. this process allows the
fabrication of specialised model systems for the study of three- dimensional cell growth, enabling optimal conditions in which the cells colonise and grow. For this purpose, the Aachen- based research scientists have transferred the rapid prototyping technique to endogenous materials. they combine organic substances with polymers and produce three-dimensional structures, which are suitable for building artificial tissue. As the basis for research,
scientists use dissolved proteins and polymers, which are irradiated with laser light and crosslinked by photolytic processes. For this they deploy specially developed laser systems, which, by means of ultra-short laser pulses, trigger multiphoton processes that lead
to polymerisation in the volume. In contrast to conventional processes, innovative and low- cost microchip lasers with pulse durations in the picosecond range are used at Fraunhofer ILt, which render the technique affordable for any laboratory. the key factors in the process are the extremely short pulse durations and the high laser-beam intensities. the short pulse duration leads to almost no damage by heat to the material. Ultra-fast pulses in the megawatt range drive a massive amount of protons into the laser focus in an extremely short time, triggering a non-linear effect. the molecules in the liquid absorb several photons simultaneously, causing free radicals to form that trigger a chemical reaction between the surrounding molecules. As a result of this process of
multiphoton polymerisation, solids form from the liquid. on the basis of cAD data, the system controls the position of the laser beam through a microscope.
www.electrooptics.com
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