RL Associates Awarded Patent

RL Associates, Inc. a Delaware County Keystone Innovation Zone (KIZ) company, was awarded a patent by The United States Patent and Trademark Office on April 8, 2008. This patent, entitled “Wavelength tunable, holographic filter with wide acceptance angle and narrow spectral bandwidth” is the second patent awarded to RL Associates.

RL Associates Inc. is a scientific research and development firm that contributes technological advances in two highly specialized areas of electro-optics: laser radar systems and optical design.

This filter, which is tunable over a 100nm spectrum, combines two holographic optical elements (HOE). The first element provides a wide acceptance angle, and the second element allows for an extremely narrow spectral bandwidth. Taken as one integrated optical unit, the RL Associates’ holographic optical filter is the only filter to provide both the wide acceptance angle and the extremely narrow spectral bandwidth.

This technology was developed in association with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for purposes of solar magnetrometry. By looking at the magnetic fields of the sun and how they change, it is possible to track the sun cycles to determine the disruption possibilities to satellites, cell phone networks, etc. Its applications also extend to ASW and mine hunting systems by filtering out the sunlight reflected off the surface of the ocean, and search and rescue operations, by filtering out obscurants such as murky water, fire, fog, or sun glare.