Double Winner Crystalline Semiconductors
AMA Innovation Award 2015 and Special Award for Developer Team from Vienna
Nuremberg/Berlin, 26 May 2015 - The AMA Association for Sensors and Measurement (AMA) will present the winners of the AMA Innovation Award 2015 at the SENSOR+TEST trade fair in Nuremberg on the 19th of May. This year, an Austrian development team convinced the jury twofold.
The “Ultraprecise Frequency Measurement with Crystalline Semiconductor Mirrors” project won the AMA Innovation Award 2015 after having already won the Young Enterprises Special Award. The Crystalline Mirror Solutions’ developer team, Christian Pawlu, Professor Markus Aspelmeyer, and Garrett Cole, thus received the 10,000-euro AMA Innovation Award as well as a free trade-fair stand at the SENSOR+TEST.
A new approach to the precise measurement of time and space by the use of crystalline mirrors reducing thermal noise by a factor of ten swayed the jury in both competing categories. “This year, 50 teams contended with first-rate development projects for the AMA Innovation Award. A compelling solution for the entire field of measuring technology and the demonstrated market relevance of the crystalline semiconductor mirrors clearly stood out among all the excellent projects,” said jury chair Professor Andreas Schütze from the Saarland University, explaining the verdict.
A laser beam is bounced back and forth between highly reflecting mirrors to obtain a precise measurement of time and space. However, the exactitude of the method is limited by thermal noise. A radically new approach by the developer team using crystalline semiconductor mirrors was able to significantly minimize this thermal noise. The Crystalline Mirror Solutions company from Vienna recognized areas of application in communications and measuring technologies as well as in aerospace. The team showed its twofold winning project at the SENSOR+TEST 2015.
The AMA Association has been presenting its Innovation Award for 15 years and is publishing “AMA Innovation Award 2015 – the Contenders,” a brochure providing an overview of all submissions. Out of 50 submitted projects this year, five others were also nominated as outstanding:
Large-Scale Nanotopography Measurement of Reflective Surfaces
Alexander Tobisch, Dr. Martin Schellenberger, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lothar Pfitzner
(Fraunhofer IISB, Erlangen) and Daniel Raseghi, Meinrad Spitz (E+H Metrology GmbH)
Ge-on-Si Photodiode with Black-Silicon Light Traps
Martin Steglich, Dr. Ernst-Bernhard Kley (Fr.-Schiller University Jena) and Dr. Michael Oehme, Prof. Jörg Schulze (Stuttgart University)
Wideband Low-Power FMCW Radar Level Measurement Device
Dr. Christoph Schmits, Dr. Michael Vogt (KROHNE Innovation GmbH, Duisburg) and Prof. Dr. Nils Pohl, Timo Jaeschke, Christian Schulz (Ruhr University Bochum)
Tachyon1024 Microcore SWaP-C, 1-kHz Uncooled MWIR Imaging FPA for Industrial Applications
Dr. Germán Vergara, Rodrigo Linares, Raul Gutierrez, Arturo Baldasano (New Infrared Technologies S.L., Boadilla del Monte)
lumiMEMS: Basic Technology for Readout of Chemical Sensors Based on Microcantilevers
Dr. Gino Putrino, Prof. Adrian Keating, Prof. Mariusz Martyniuk, Prof. Lorenzo Faraone, Prof. John Dell, (University of Western Australia)
Submissions for the AMA Innovation Award 2016 will be invited as of October 2015. Individuals as well as developer teams from enterprises or institutes from all over the world may then submit their projects. Brochure with the submissions for 2015.
