Photek Ltd

Photek Ltd
Private
Industry Electronics
Founded (September 1, 1991 (1991-09-01))
Founders Jon Howorth, Ralph Powell, Martin Ingle, Geoff Holt, Mehmet Madakbas
Headquarters 26 Castleham Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, UK
Key people
Gareth Jones
(Managing director)
Martin Ingle
(Technical Director)
James Milnes
(R&D Manager)
Panos Kapetanopoulos
(Sales Manager)
Products
Number of employees
55 (2016)
Website Official website

Photek Limited is a specialist manufacturer and global supplier of vacuum based tubes and camera systems for photon detection. Photek manufacture image intensifiers, solar-blind detectors, photomultipliers, streak tubes and a range of associated electronics and camera systems. The company was founded in 1991 by Jon Howorth, Ralph Powell, Martin Ingle, Geoff Holt and Mehmet Madakbas.

Photek's manufacturing specialty is fast time-resolution devices using micro-channel plates. Fusion plasma diagnostics collaborations[1] with AWE have improved time resolution to less than 100ps for devices with micro-channel plate amplification.[2] Detectors without an MCP, such as vacuum photo-diodes, can go as low as 55ps time resolution.[3] Specialist devices, such as streak tubes, achieve an even better resolution of 1 picosecond or less [4] but must sacrifice one spatial dimension for timing information.

Notable Projects

Space Missions

Photek detectors have been used in several space missions through collaborations with academic institutions such as the University of Leicester:

Particle Detectors

Photek are partners in the TORCH project at CERN to produce a new detector for the LHCb upgrade.[12][13][14] A concurrent collaboration with Arradiance, USA to develop protective vacuum coatings for electron multipliers has shown ALD-coated photomultipliers can cope with the much higher flux (5C.cm-2) required in particle detector applications.[15]

Velocity Map Imaging

Photek were the first to commercialise Velocity Map Imaging (VMI) technology,[16] offering VMI ion optics and related instrumentation for physical chemistry[17] and laser physics research applications.[18] VMI is a variation of charged-particle imaging that offers high velocity resolution, unlocking information on fundamental chemical structure or the characteristics of the intense, ultra-short laser-particle interaction. VMI was used as a ‘quantum microscope’ to take the first ever ‘photograph’ inside a hydrogen atom in 2013.[19][20]

Unusual Applications

References

  1. "GA Diagnostic Improvements" (PDF). Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  2. "AWE time resolution". Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  3. "Ultra high speed PMT" (PDF). Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  4. "Streak camera speed". Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  5. "UVIT detector" (PDF). Retrieved March 19, 2016.
  6. "SSUSI detector". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  7. "SSUSI Photek 1". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  8. "SSUSI Photek 2". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  9. "SSUSI Photek 3". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  10. "SSUSI Photek 4". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  11. "SOFT detector". Retrieved March 19, 2016.
  12. "TORCH Overview" (PDF). Retrieved March 19, 2016.
  13. "LHCb TORCH upgrade". Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  14. "LHCb TORCH upgrade 2" (PDF). Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  15. "TORCH Lifetime" (PDF). Retrieved March 19, 2016.
  16. "VMI homepage". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  17. "Uni of Oxford Dynamics Group". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  18. "VMI EU applications". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  19. "Fox News hydrogen atom". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  20. "Hydrogen Atoms under Magnification: Direct Observation of the Nodal Structure of Stark States". Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  21. "Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy of Michelangelo's David". Retrieved March 18, 2016.
  22. "In vivo imaging of spontaneous ultraweak photon emission from a rat's brain correlated with cerebral energy metabolism and oxidative stress.". Retrieved March 18, 2016.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, April 04, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.