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{{Short description|Canadian manufacturer of scientific instruments}}{{COI|date=August 2021}}

factoids

| area_served = International| num_employees = 25-30photonetc.com}}}}Photon etc. is a Canadian manufacturer of infrared cameras, widely tunable optical filters, hyperspectral imaging and spectroscopic scientific instruments for academic and industrial applications. Its main technology is based on volume Bragg gratings, which are used as filters either for swept lasers or for global imaging.

History

As a spin-off of the California Institute of Technologyweblink {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150106103032weblink |date=2015-01-06 }}, CALTECH Office of Technology Transfer, "Past/Current Startups", retrieved January 2015 the company was founded in 2003 by Sébastien Blais-Ouellette WEB, Champagne, Stéphane, Des étoiles à l'entrepreneuriat,weblink lapresse.ca, 21 December 2014, WEB, Turcotte, Claude, Portrait d'entreprise - Voir grand dans l'outil optique,weblink ledevoir.com, 17 June 2013, 31 January 2015, who was working on narrow band imaging tunable filters for the detection of hydroxyl groups in the Earth atmosphere. This is how he developed the main technology of the company, a patented S. Blais-Ouellette; "Method and apparatus for a Bragg grating tunable filter", US patent 7557990 (B2), issued Jul 7, 2009,weblink Blais-Ouellette; E. Wishnow; "Spectrographic multi-band camera", US patent 8237844 (B2), issued Apr 25, 2006,weblink Blais-Ouellette; K. Matthews; C. Moser; "Efficient multi-line narrow-band large format holographic filter", US patent US7221491 (B2), issued Apr 18, 2006,weblink volume Bragg grating for filtering purposes.The company was first established in the J.-Armand Bombardier Incubator at Université de Montréal where it benefited from a complete infrastructure and proximity to researchers. After 5 years, Photon etc. moved to its actual location at the "Campus des technologies de la santé″ in the Rosemont district of Montréal. Photon etc. has 25 employees in Canada and has received several awards and recognition (Québec Entrepreneur of the Year (finalist),WEB, EY announces 2014 Québec Entrepreneur of the YearTM finalists today,weblink www.newswire.ca, 29 January 2015, CCFC (winner),WEB, Grand Prix d'excellence en affaires France-Québec 2009,weblink akova.ca, 29 January 2015, Fondation Armand-Frappier (winner - prix émergence),NEWS, Tanguay, Claude, Pour l'avancement de la recherche en santé - rapport annuel,weblink 29 January 2015, Prism Award (finalist) WEB, Prism Awards Finalists,weblink www.photonics.com, 29 January 2015, ). In the last ten years, the company has developed numerous collaborations,NEWS, Malorie, Bertrand, Research-business partnership creates unique image system,weblink 19 March 2015, INNOVATION, February 24, 2015, NEWS, IRDEP to Showcase Photon etc's Hyperspectral Analyzer for Photovoltaics Industry,weblink 19 March 2015, AZO Cleantech, October 6, 2010, WEB, Pouliot, François, Une alliance internationale qui donne plus de crédibilité à Photon etc.,weblink 2 September 2014, filed several patents and created spin-off companies in various domains: Photonic Knowledge (mining exploration), Nüvü Cameras (EMCCD cameras) WEB, Ouatik, Bouchra, Nüvü Caméras: voir ce que les autres ne voient pas,weblink lapresse.ca, 31 January 2015, and Optina Diagnostics (retinal imaging).WEB, Dubuc, André, Maladies de la rétine: une caméra qui détecte de façon précoce,weblink lapresse.ca, 31 January 2015, More recently, in June 2015, Photon etc. expanded its expertise in nanotechnology and launched a new division, Photon Nano. Photon Nano provides Raman, fluorescence and plasmonic labels synthesized by top research laboratories. Those labels are mainly employed in multiplexing applications for cellular imaging.

Technology

Photon etc.'s core technology is a continuously tunable filter based on volume Bragg gratings. It consists of a photo-thermo-refractive glass with a periodically varying index of refraction in which the modulation structure can be orientated to transmit or reflect incident light.BOOK, A. L. Glebov, Micro-Optics 2012, Volume Bragg gratings as ultra-narrow and multiband optical filters, 8428, 84280C, 2012, 10.1117/12.923575, etal, 2012SPIE.8428E..0CG, 20980117, Thienpont, Hugo, Mohr, Jürgen, Zappe, Hans, Nakajima, Hirochika, In order to select a particular wavelength that will be filtered (diffracted), the angle of the filter is adjusted to meet Bragg condition:BOOK, C. Kress, Bernard, Applied Digital Optics : From Micro-optics to Nanophotonics, 2009, 978-0-470-02263-4, BOOK, Ciapurin, Igor V, Glebov, Leonid B., Smirnov, Vadim I., Practical Holography XIX: Materials and Applications, Modeling of Gaussian beam diffraction on volume Bragg gratings in PTR glass, 2005, 5742, 183, 10.1117/12.591215, 2005SPIE.5742..183C, 43830811, Jeong, Tung H, Bjelkhagen, Hans I,

where {{math|n}} is an integer, {{math|λ}}B is the wavelength that will be diffracted, {{math|Λ}} is the step of the grating, {{math|θ}} is the angle between the incident beam and the normal of the entrance surface and {{math|φ}} is the angle between the normal and the grating vector. For transmission gratings, Bragg planes are perpendicular to the entrance surface ({{math|φ}}={{math|π}}/2) while for reflection gratings, Bragg plans are parallel to the entrance surface ({{math|φ}}=0). If the beam does not meet the Bragg condition, it passes through the filter, undiffracted.In a Bragg filter, the incoming collimated light is first diffracted by a volume filter and only a small fraction of the spectrum is affected. Then, by using a second parallel filter with the same modulation period, light can be recombined and an image can be reconstructed.BOOK, S. Blais-Ouellette, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy, The imaging Bragg tunable filter: A new path to integral field spectroscopy and narrow band imaging, SPIE Conference Series, 6269, 62695H, 2006, 10.1117/12.672614, etal, 2006SPIE.6269E..5HB, 53076655, McLean, Ian S, Iye, Masanori,

Hyperspectral imaging

The company commercializes hyperspectral imaging systems based on volume Bragg gratings. This technique combines spectroscopy and imaging: each image is acquired on a narrow band of wavelengths (as small as 0.3 nm). The monochromatic images acquired from a hyperspectral data cube, which contains both the spatial (x- and y-axes) and spectral (z-axis) information of a sample.In this technique, global imaging is used in order to acquire a large area of a sample without damaging it.JOURNAL, W. Havener, High-throughput Graphene Imaging on Arbitrary Substrates with Wide-field Raman Spectroscopy, ACS Nano, 2012, 10.1021/nn2037169, 6, 1, 373–380, etal, 22206260, 20056064, In global imaging, the whole field of view of the microscope objective is acquired at the same time compared to point-by-point techniques where either the sample or the excitation laser needs to be moved in order to reconstruct a map. When combined to microscopy, darkfield or brightfield illumination can be employed and various experiments can be carried out such as:{hide}columns-list|colwidth=30em|style=width: 600px|

• Photoluminescence
• Fluorescence
• Electroluminescence
• Raman imaging
• Wide-field imaging

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Tunable filters

The volume Bragg grating technology is also used to design tunable bandpass filters for various light sources. This technology combines an out-of-band rejection of