by Todd Hanson
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) researchers won two of R&D magazine's prestigious 2007 R&D 100 Awards. The award-winning projects this year include the Camera on a Chip and the Portable Acoustic Cytometer.
"I am impressed with and proud of the ingenuity of our R&D 100 award winners," said Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio. "The awards demonstrate the Laboratory's powerful role in developing innovative concepts and translating them into practical solutions." These latest winners bring LANL's total to 105 awards since the Laboratory began entering innovations in the competition in 1978.
Terry Wallace, principal associate director for science, technology and engineering, was pleased with the awards, but a bit surprised. "We had some excellent submissions this year that validate the fact that the Laboratory is on the cutting edge of technological development. I am surprised we didn't get more awards because of the very high quality of our entries."
Camera on a Chip
The Camera on a Chip is a 2-centimeter by 2-centimeter microelectronic device that combines an array of silicon photosensors and a metal-oxidesemiconductor (CMOS) chip with control-and-processing circuits. The camera has a light-detection efficiency of more than 90 percent in visible light wavelengths (450 to 650 nanometers), a minimum exposure time of 50 nanoseconds, and a 300-nanosecond recovery time.
It also is designed for use in making radiographic movies of ultrafast phenomena employing protons (instead of x-rays) as the illumination source and for producing high-speed movies of fast processes over a wide range of visible or nearly visible wavelengths. The Camera on a Chip was developed by LANL researchers Kris Kwiatkowski and Christopher L. Morris, in conjunction with researchers from Teledyne Imaging Sensors.
Portable Acoustic Cytometer
The Portable Acoustic Cytometer will bring the diagnostic power of highperformance flow cytometry to more researchers and healthcare providers around the world. The instrument uses acoustic waves instead of a complex fluid-handling system to focus cells into a tight, concentrated stream for analysis by a laser beam.
As the world's first portable and affordable flow cytometer, the instrument also eliminates the need for large volumes of purified water, a scarce resource in parts of the world.
The device can be used for any of the analyses currently being done with conventional flow cytometers, but with higher throughput and greater sensitivity. The Portable Acoustic Cytometer was developed by Steven Graves, Robert Habbersett, John C. Martin, Mark Naivar, and Gregory Goddard, in conjunction with researchers from Acoustic Cytometry Systems, who included two former LANL researchers, Greg Kaduchak and Michael Ward.
